Abstract
Studies of experimental grassland communities1,2,3,4,5,6,7 have demonstrated that plant diversity can stabilize productivity through species asynchrony, in which decreases in the biomass of some species are compensated for by increases in others1,2. However, it remains unknown whether these findings are relevant to natural ecosystems, especially those for which species diversity is threatened by anthropogenic global change8,9,10,11. Here we analyse diversity–stability relationships from 41 grasslands on five continents and examine how these relationships are affected by chronic fertilization, one of the strongest drivers of species loss globally8. Unmanipulated communities with more species had greater species asynchrony, resulting in more stable biomass production, generalizing a result from biodiversity experiments to real-world grasslands. However, fertilization weakened the positive effect of diversity on stability. Contrary to expectations, this was not due to species loss after eutrophication but rather to an increase in the temporal variation of productivity in combination with a decrease in species asynchrony in diverse communities. Our results demonstrate separate and synergistic effects of diversity and eutrophication on stability, emphasizing the need to understand how drivers of global change interactively affect the reliable provisioning of ecosystem services in real-world systems.
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Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 298935 to Y.H. (with A.H. and E.W.S.). This work was generated using data from the Nutrient Network (http://www.nutnet.org) experiment, funded at the site-scale by individual researchers. Coordination and data management have been supported by funding to E.T.B. and E.W.S. from the National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (NSF-DEB-1042132), the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) programme (NSF-DEB-1234162 to Cedar Creek as well as other LTER sites), and the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota (DG-0001-13). We also thank the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute for hosting project data, and the Institute on the Environment for hosting Network meetings. We thank R. S. L. Veiga, F. Isbell, R. K. Didham, H. McGinness and M. O’Brien for suggestions that improved the manuscript.
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E.W.S., E.T.B., W.S.H. and E.M.L. are Nutrient Network coordinators. Y.H. and A.H. developed and framed research questions. Y.H., E.W.S., E.T.B., P.B.A., W.S.H., H.H., A.S.MD., C.J.S., J.D.B., Y.M.B., C.C., S.L.C., E.I.D., K.F.D., P.A.F., J.F., D.S.G., V.L.J., J.A.K., J.M.H.K., K.J.L., W.L., R.L.McC., B.A.M., J.L.M., S.M.P., A.C.R., M.S., M.S. and A.H. collected the data used in this analysis. Y.H. and A.H. analysed the data. E.W.S., E.T.B., H.H., E.M.L., P.D., K.J.L., J.L.M., L.R.O. and M.S. contributed to data analyses. Y.H. and A.H. wrote the paper with input from all authors.
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Extended data figures and tables
Extended Data Figure 1 Locations of the 41 Nutrient Network sites included in this study.
Numbers correspond to the ‘site code’ column in Extended Data Table 1.
Extended Data Figure 2 Effect of fertilization-induced changes in diversity on changes in stability of ANPP and changes in species asynchrony.
a, Changes in stability of ANPP (slope and 95% confidence intervals: 0.009 (−0.048 to 0.030)); b, changes in species asynchrony (0.012 (−0.004 to 0.027)). Neither was related to changes in species richness caused by fertilization. Flat lines represent the overall non-significant mean effects. Nutrient-induced changes were calculated as the average difference per block between fertilized and unmanipulated Nutrient Network plots. Colours correspond to the ‘colour code’ column in Extended Data Table 1. Points are values for individual plots (n = 117).
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Hautier, Y., Seabloom, E., Borer, E. et al. Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands. Nature 508, 521–525 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13014
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13014
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