title: Diversity-disturbance relationships: frequency and intensity interact.
abstract: An influential ecological theory, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH), predicts that intermediate levels of disturbance will maximize species diversity. Empirical studies, however, have described a wide variety of diversity-disturbance relationships (DDRs). Using experimental populations of microbes, we show that the form of the DDR depends on an interaction between disturbance frequency and intensity. We find that diversity shows a monotonically increasing, unimodal or flat relationship with disturbance, depending on the values of the disturbance aspects considered. These results confirm recent theoretical predictions, and potentially reconcile the conflicting body of empirical evidence on DDRs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK. alex.hall@env.ethz.ch
authors.forename: Alex R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Adam D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Helen C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Leggett
authors.forename: Stephen H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Roxburgh
authors.forename: Angus
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Buckling
authors.forename: Katriona
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shea
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D018441:Biofilms; D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D004777:Environment; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011551:Pseudomonas fluorescens / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*