Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands

Authors

Yann Hautier, University of MinnesotaFollow
Eric W. Seabloom, University of MinnesotaFollow
Elizabeth T. Borer, University of MinnesotaFollow
Peter B. Adler, Utah State University
W. Stanley Harpole, Utah State University
Helmut Hillebrand, Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg
Eric M. Lind, University of MinnesotaFollow
Andrew S. MacDougall, University of Guelph
Carly J. Stevens, Lancaster UniversityFollow
Jonathan D. Bakker, University of WashingtonFollow
Yvonne M. Buckley, University of QueenslandFollow
Chengjin Chu, Lanzhou University
Scott L. Collins, University of New MexicoFollow
Pedro Daleo, Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras
Ellen I. Damschen, University of Wisconsin - MadisonFollow
Kendi F. Davies, University of ColoradoFollow
Philip A. Fay, USDA-ARSFollow
Jennifer Firn, Queensland University of Technology
Daniel S. Gruner, University of Maryland
Virginia L. Jin, USDA-ARSFollow
Julia A. Klein, Colorado State University - Fort Collins
Johannes M. H. Knops, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Kimberly J. La Pierre, University of California - Berkeley
Wei Li, Southwest Forestry University
Rebecca L. McCulley, University of KentuckyFollow
Brett A. Melbourne, University of Colorado at BoulderFollow
Joslin L. Moore, University of Melbourne
Lydia R. O’Halloran, Oregon State University
Suzanne M. Prober, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences
Anita C. Risch, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest
Mahesh Sankaran, University of Leeds
Martin Schuetz, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest
Andy Hector, University of Oxford

Date of this Version

2014

Citation

Nature (2014), doi:10.1038/nature13014; Published online February 16, 2014

Comments

This article is a U.S. government work, and is not subject to copyright in the United States.

Abstract

Studies of experimental grassland communities^1–7 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 others^1,2. However, it remains unknown whether these findings are relevant to natural ecosystems, especially those for which species diversity is threatened by anthropogenic global change^8–11. 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.