2010•PLoS ONEOpen access
Diversity Promotes Temporal Stability across Levels of Ecosystem Organization in Experimental Grasslands
Raphaël Proulx, Christian Wirth, Winfried Voigt, Alexandra Weigelt, Christiane Roscher, Sabine Attinger, Jussi Baade, Romain L. Barnard, Nina Buchmann, François Buscot, Nico Eisenhauer, Markus Fischer, Gerd Gleixner, Stefan Halle, Anke Hildebrandt, Esther Kowalski, Annely Kuu, Markus Lange, Alexandru Milcu, Pascal A. Niklaus, Yvonne Oelmann, Stephan Rosenkranz, Alexander C.W. Sabais, Christoph Scherber, Michael Scherer‐Lorenzen, Stefan Scheu, Ernst‐Detlef Schulze, Jens Schumacher, Guido Schwichtenberg, Jean‐François Soussana, Vicky M. Temperton, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Wolfgang Wilcke, Bernhard Schmid
Open full text 116 citations
Abstract
The diversity-stability hypothesis states that current losses of biodiversity can impair the ability of an ecosystem to dampen the effect of environmental perturbations on its functioning. Using data from a long-term and comprehensive biodiversity experiment, we quantified the temporal stability of 42 variables characterizing twelve ecological functions in managed grassland plots varying in plant species richness. We demonstrate that diversity increases stability i) across trophic levels (producer, consumer), ii) at both the system (community, ecosystem) and the component levels (population, functional group, phylogenetic clade), and iii) primarily for aboveground rather than belowground processes. Temporal synchronization across studied variables was mostly unaffected with increasing species richness. This study provides the strongest empirical support so far that diversity promotes stability across different ecological functions and levels of ecosystem organization in grasslands.
Open-access reader