Journal Article10.1038/367363A0
Biodiversity and stability in grasslands
David Tilman,John A. Downing +1 more
2.1K
TL;DR: This article showed that primary productivity in more diverse plant communities is more resistant to, and recovers more fully from, a major drought and that each additional species lost from our grasslands had a progressively greater impact on drought resistance.
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Abstract: One of the ecological tenets justifying conservation of biodiversity is that diversity begets stability. Impacts of biodiversity on population dynamics and ecosystem functioning have long been debated1–7, however, with many theoretical explorations2–6,8–11 but few field studies12–15. Here we describe a long-term study of grasslands16,17 which shows that primary productivity in more diverse plant communities is more resistant to, and recovers more fully from, a major drought. The curvilinear relationship we observe suggests that each additional species lost from our grasslands had a progressively greater impact on drought resistance. Our results support the diversity—stability hypothesis5,6,18,19, but not the alternative hypothesis that most species are functionally redundant19–21. This study implies that the preservation of biodiversity is essential for the maintenance of stable productivity in ecosystems.
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Citations
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Peeking at ecosystem stability: making use of a natural disturbance experiment to analyze resistance and resilience
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Growth and nitrogen uptake in an experimental community of annuals exposed to elevated atmospheric CO2
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Beyond diversity: how nested predator effects control ecosystem functions
TL;DR: It is shown that major parts of the observed diversity effect can be assigned to the increasing likelihood of including the most influential predator, and nested effects of predator identities become predictable when taking the species' body masses into account.
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References
•Book
Applied Regression Analysis
Norman R. Draper,Harry Smith +1 more
- 01 Jan 1966
TL;DR: In this article, the Straight Line Case is used to fit a straight line by least squares, and the Durbin-Watson Test is used for checking the straight line fit.
19K
•Book
Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems
Robert M. May,N. MacDonald +1 more
- 21 Aug 1973
TL;DR: Preface vii Preface to the Second Edition Biology Edition 1.
The complexity and stability of ecosystems
TL;DR: Early studies suggested that simple ecosystems were less stable than complex ones, but later studies came to the opposite conclusion as discussed by the authors. Confusion arose because of the many different meanings of "complexity" and "stability".
2.9K