Data from: Why are plant communities stable? Disentangling the role of dominance, asynchrony and averaging effect following realistic species loss scenario
A growing number of studies have demonstrated that biodiversity is a strong and positive predictor of ecosystem temporal stability by simultaneously affecting multiple underlying mechanisms of stability i.e. dominance, asynchrony, and averaging effects. However, to date, no study has disentangled th...
Gespeichert in:
Hauptverfasser: | , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Format: | Dataset |
Sprache: | eng |
Schlagworte: | |
Online-Zugang: | Volltext bestellen |
Tags: |
Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
|
Zusammenfassung: | A growing number of studies have demonstrated that biodiversity is a
strong and positive predictor of ecosystem temporal stability by
simultaneously affecting multiple underlying mechanisms of stability i.e.
dominance, asynchrony, and averaging effects. However, to date, no study
has disentangled the relative role of these key mechanisms of stability in
biodiversity experiments. We created a species richness gradient by
mimicking a loss of rare species and assessed the role of species richness
on community stability and, more importantly, quantified the relative role
of three stabilizing mechanisms i.e. dominance (stabilization due to
stable dominants compared to the rest of the species in the community),
asynchrony (stabilization due to temporal asynchrony between species), and
averaging effects (pure effect of diversity) on community stability across
a species richness gradient. We found that extreme species loss negatively
impacted community stability, but just three species were enough to
stabilize biomass production to a level similar to highly diverse
communities. However, the similar stability of communities resulted from
differing contributions from each stability mechanism, depending on the
community diversity. Since less abundant species were more temporally
variable, species loss stabilized the populations of the remaining
species. The loss of rare and subordinate species reduced the dominance
and averaging effects, but increased the asynchrony effect. Hence, the
asynchrony effect played a major role in the stability of species poor
communities, while the averaging effect drove most of the stability of
species rich communities. Overall, dominance played only a minor role,
accounting for 5-15% of the stabilization, while asynchrony and averaging
effects were dominating forces contributing to ~ 85-95% of the total
stabilization. Synthesis. This study highlights the importance of
biodiversity and roles of dominant and rare species for long-term
community stability and, for the first time, disentangles relative roles
of dominance effect, asynchrony, and averaging effect on community
stability in a real-world biodiversity experiment. |
---|---|
DOI: | 10.5061/dryad.rxwdbrvj8 |