title: Species dynamics alter community diversity-biomass stability relationships.
abstract: The relationship between community diversity and biomass variability remains a crucial ecological topic, with positive, negative and neutral diversity-stability relationships reported from empirical studies. Theory highlights the relative importance of Species-Species or Species-Environment interactions in driving diversity-stability patterns. Much previous work is based on an assumption of identical (stable) species-level dynamics. We studied ecosystem models incorporating stable, cyclic and more complex species-level dynamics, with either linear or non-linear density dependence, within a locally stable community framework. Species composition varies with increasing diversity, interacting with the correlation of species' environmental responses to drive either positive or negative diversity-stability patterns, which theory based on communities with only stable species-level dynamics fails to predict. Including different dynamics points to new mechanisms that drive the full range of diversity-biomass stability relationships in empirical systems where a wider range of dynamical behaviours are important.
authors.affiliation: Population Ecology Group, Institut Mediterrani d'Estudis Avançats (UIB-CSIC), Miquel Marquès, Esporles, Spain. mfowler@imedea.uib-csic.es
authors.forename: Mike S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Fowler
authors.forename: Jouni
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Laakso
authors.forename: Veijo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kaitala
authors.forename: Lasse
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ruokolainen
authors.forename: Esa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ranta
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Post
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D018533:Biomass; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics