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Predicting ecosystem stability from community composition and biodiversity
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Ecol. Lett. ISI Document Delivery No.: 132OA Times Cited: 0 Cited Reference Count: 46 de Mazancourt, Claire Isbell, Forest Larocque, Allen Berendse, Frank De Luca, Enrica Grace, James B. Haegeman, Bart Polley, H. Wayne Roscher, Christiane Schmid, Bernhard Tilman, David van Ruijven, Jasper Weigelt, Alexandra Wilsey, Brian J. Loreau, Michel Wiley-blackwell Hoboken. International audience. As biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, an important current scientific challenge is to understand and predict the consequences of biodiversity loss. Here, we develop a theory that predicts the temporal variability of community biomass from the properties of individual component species in monoculture. Our theory shows that biodiversity stabilises ecosystems through three main mechanisms: (1) asynchrony in species’ responses to environmental fluctuations, (2) reduced demographic stochasticity due to overyielding in species mixtures and (3) reduced observation error (including spatial and sampling variability). Parameterised with empirical data from four long-term grassland biodiversity experiments, our prediction explained 22–75% of the observed variability, and captured much of the effect of species richness. Richness stabilised communities mainly by increasing community biomass and reducing the strength of demographic stochasticity. Our approach calls for a re-evaluation of the mechanisms explaining the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem stability.
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