Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands

HAUTIER Y; SEABLOOM E; BORER ET; ADLER P; HARPOLE WS; HILLEBRAND H; LIND E; MCDOUGALL AS; STEVENS C; BAKKER J; BUCKLEY Y; CHU C; COLLINS S; DALEO P; DAMSCHEN E; DAVIES K; FAY F; FRIN J; GRUNER D; JIN V; KLEIN J; KNOPS J; LA PIERRE K; LI W; MCCULLEY R; MELBOURNE B; MOORE J; O'HALLORAN L; PROBER SM; RISCH A; SANKARAN M; SCHUETZ M; HECTOR A

NATURE

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2014 vol. 508 p. 521 - 525

0028-0836

Studies of experimental grassland communities have demonstratedthat plant diversity can stabilize productivity through speciesasynchrony, in which decreases in the biomass of some speciesare compensated for by increases in others. However, it remainsunknown whether these findings are relevant to natural ecosystems,especially those for which species diversity is threatened by anthropogenicglobal change. Here we analyse diversity?stability relationshipsfrom 41 grasslands on five continents and examine howthese relationships are affected by chronic fertilization, one of thestrongest drivers of species loss globally. Unmanipulated communitieswith more species had greater species asynchrony, resulting inmore stable biomass production, generalizing a result from biodiversityexperiments to real-world grasslands. However, fertilizationweakened the positive effect of diversity on stability. Contraryto expectations, this was not due to species loss after eutrophicationbut rather to an increase in the temporal variation of productivity incombination with a decrease in species asynchrony in diverse communities.Our results demonstrate separate and synergistic effectsof diversity and eutrophication on stability, emphasizing the needto understand how drivers of global change interactively affect thereliable provisioning of ecosystem services in real-world systems.