Synchrony matters more than species richness in plant community stability at a global scale

Enrique Valencia (1) , Francesco de Bello (2, 1) , Thomas Galland (3, 2) , Peter Adler (4) , Jan Lepš (2, 3) , Anna E-Vojtkó (2, 3) , Roel van Klink (5) , Carlos Carmona (6) , Jiří Danihelka (7, 3) , Jürgen Dengler (8, 5, 9) , David Eldridge (10) , Marc Estiarte (11) , Ricardo García-González (12) , Eric Garnier (13) , Daniel Gómez‐garcía (12) , Susan Harrison (14) , Tomáš Herben (3, 15) , Ricardo Ibáñez (16) , Anke Jentsch (9) , Norbert Juergens (17) , Miklós Kertész (18) , Katja Klumpp (19) , Frédérique Louault (19) , Rob Marrs (20) , Romà Ogaya (11, 21) , Gábor Ónodi (18) , Robin Pakeman (22) , Iker Pardo (23) , Meelis Pärtel (6) , Begoña Peco (24) , Josep Peñuelas (23) , Richard Pywell (25) , Marta Rueda (12) , Wolfgang Schmidt (26) , Ute Schmiedel (27) , Martin Schuetz (28) , Hana Skálová (3) , Petr Šmilauer (2) , Marie Šmilauerová (2) , Christian Smit (29) , Minghua Song (30) , Martin Stock (31) , James Val (10) , Vigdis Vandvik (32, 33) , David Ward (34) , Karsten Wesche (5, 35) , Susan Wiser (36) , Ben Woodcock (25) , Truman Young (14) , Fei-Hai Yu (37) , Martin Zobel (6) , Lars Götzenberger (2, 38)

1 URJC - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos [Madrid]
2 University of South Bohemia
3 IPM / CAS - Institute of Physics of Materials of the Czech Academy of Sciences
4 USU - Utah State University
5 iDiv - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
6 University of Tartu
7 MUNI - Masaryk University [Brno]
8 ZHAW - Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften = Zurich University of Applied Sciences
9 University of Bayreuth
10 UNSW - University of New South Wales [Sydney]
11 CREAF - Centre for Ecological Research and Applied Forestries
12 CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas [Spain]
13 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
14 UC Davis - University of California [Davis]
15 UK - Univerzita Karlova [Praha, Česká republika] = Charles University [Prague, Czech Republic]
16 UNAV - Universidad de Navarra [Pamplona]
17 Hamburg University of Applied Sciences [Hamburg]
18 MTA - Hungarian Academy of Sciences
19 UREP - Unité Mixte de Recherche sur l'Ecosystème Prairial - UMR
20 University of Liverpool
21 Open University of Catalonia [Barcelona]
22 The James Hutton Institute
23 UPV / EHU - University of the Basque Country = Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
24 UCM - Universidad Complutense de Madrid = Complutense University of Madrid [Madrid]
25 UKCEH - UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology
26 SUB Göttingen - Göttingen State and University Library
27 University of Hamburg
28 Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL
29 Community and Conservation Ecology Group [Groningen]
30 CAS - Chinese Academy of Sciences [Beijing]
31 LKN.SH - Landesbetrieb für Küstenschutz, Nationalpark und Meeresschutz Schleswig-Holstein [Husum, Allemagne]
32 UiB - University of Bergen
33 BCCR - Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
34 Kent State University
35 TU Dresden - Technische Universität Dresden = Dresden University of Technology
36 Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research [Lincoln]
37 Taizhou Vocational College of Science and Technology
38 LCAS - Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences

The stability of ecological communities is critical for the stable provisioning of ecosystem services, such as food and forage production, carbon sequestration, and soil fertility. Greater biodiversity is expected to enhance stability across years by decreasing synchrony among species, but the drivers of stability in nature remain poorly resolved. Our analysis of time series from 79 datasets across the world showed that stability was associated more strongly with the degree of synchrony among dominant species than with species richness. The relatively weak influence of species richness is consistent with theory predicting that the effect of richness on stability weakens when synchrony is higher than expected under random fluctuations, which was the case in most communities. Land management, nutrient addition, and climate change treatments had relatively weak and varying effects on stability, modifying how species richness, synchrony, and stability interact. Our results demonstrate the prevalence of biotic drivers on ecosystem stability, with the potential for environmental drivers to alter the intricate relationship among richness, synchrony, and stability.

Mots clés: evenness; climate change drivers; species richness; stability; synchrony

Domaines: Milieux et Changements globaux

Enrique Valencia, Francesco de Bello, Thomas Galland, Peter Adler, Jan Lepš, et al.. Synchrony matters more than species richness in plant community stability at a global scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020, 117 (39), pp.24345-24351. ⟨10.1073/pnas.1920405117⟩. ⟨hal-03082939⟩