TY - JOUR

T1 - Diversity promotes temporal stability across levels of ecosystem organization in experimental grasslands

AU - Proulx, Raphaël

AU - Wirth, Christian

AU - Voigt, Winfried

AU - Weigelt, Alexandra

AU - Roscher, Christiane

AU - Attinger, Sabine

AU - Baade, Jussi

AU - Barnard, Romain L.

AU - Buchmann, Nina

AU - Buscot, François

AU - Eisenhauer, Nico

AU - Fischer, Markus

AU - Gleixner, Gerd

AU - Halle, Stefan

AU - Hildebrandt, Anke

AU - Kowalski, Esther

AU - Kuu, Annely

AU - Lange, Markus

AU - Milcu, Alex

AU - Niklaus, Pascal A.

AU - Oelmann, Yvonne

AU - Rosenkranz, Stephan

AU - Sabais, Alexander

AU - Scherber, Christoph

AU - Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael

AU - Scheu, Stefan

AU - Schulze, Ernst Detlef

AU - Schumacher, Jens

AU - Schwichtenberg, Guido

AU - Soussana, Jean François

AU - Temperton, Vicky M.

AU - Weisser, Wolfgang W.

AU - Wilcke, Wolfgang

AU - Schmid, Bernhard

N1 - The Jena Experiment is funded by the German Science Foundation (FOR 456) with additional support from the Max Planck Society and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

PY - 2010/10/13

Y1 - 2010/10/13

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Biology

KW - species diversity

KW - biodiversity

KW - biomass

KW - community ecology

KW - Ecosystems Research

KW - ecosystem functioning

KW - plants

KW - species interactions

KW - Invasive species

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78149459500&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0013382

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0013382

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 20967213

AN - SCOPUS:78149459500

VL - 5

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 10

M1 - e13382

ER -