Functional traits mediate the effect of land use on drivers of community stability within and across trophic levels
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Authors
Understanding how land use affects temporal stability is crucial to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, the mechanistic links between land-use intensity and stability-driving mechanisms remain unclear, with functional traits likely playing a key role. Using 13 years of data from 300 sites in Germany, we tested whether and how trait-based community features mediate the effect of land-use intensity on acknowledged stability drivers (compensatory dynamics, portfolio effect, and dominant species variability), within and across plant and arthropod communities. Trait-based plant features, especially the prevalence of acquisitive strategies along the leaf-economics spectrum, were the main land-use intensity mediators within and across taxonomic and trophic levels, consistently influencing dominant species variability. Functional diversity also mediated land-use intensity effects but played a lesser role. Our analysis discloses trait-based community features as key mediators of land-use effects on stability drivers, emphasizing the need to consider multi-trophic functional interactions to better understand complex ecosystem dynamics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | eadp6445 |
| Journal | Science Advances |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISSN | 2375-2548 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 24.01.2025 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
- SDG 15 - Life on Land
Sustainable Development Goals
- Biology
- Ecosystems Research
Research areas
- General