Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands

Yann Hautier¹, Eric W Seabloom², Elizabeth T Borer², Peter B Adler³, W Stanley Harpole⁴, Helmut Hillebrand⁵, Eric M Lind², Andrew S MacDougall⁶, Carly J Stevens⁷, Jonathan D Bakker⁸, Yvonne M Buckley⁹, Chengjin Chu¹⁰, Scott L Collins¹¹, Pedro Daleo¹², Ellen I Damschen¹³, Kendi F Davies¹⁴, Philip A Fay¹⁵, Jennifer Firn¹⁶, Daniel S Gruner¹⁷, Virginia L Jin¹⁸, Julia A Klein¹⁹, Johannes M H Knops²⁰, Kimberly J La Pierre²¹, Wei Li²², Rebecca L McCulley²³, Brett A Melbourne¹⁴, Joslin L Moore²⁴, Lydia R O'Halloran²⁵, Suzanne M Prober²⁶, Anita C Risch²⁷, Mahesh Sankaran²⁸, Martin Schuetz²⁷, Andy Hector²⁹

Affiliations

¹ 1] Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA [2] Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
² Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA.
³ Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, USA.
⁴ Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
⁵ Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany.
⁶ Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada.
⁷ Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK.
⁸ School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
⁹ 1] Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia [2] School of Natural Sciences, Department of Zoology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
¹⁰ State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, Research Station of Alpine Meadow and Wetland Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
¹¹ Department of Biology, MSC03-2020, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA.
¹² Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC) (CONICET-UNMdP), Mar del Plata 7600, Argentina.
¹³ Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
¹⁵ United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Grassland Soil and Water Research Lab, Temple, Texas 76502, USA.
¹⁶ Queensland University of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, Brisbane 4000, Australia.
¹⁷ Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
¹⁸ United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Agroecosystem Management Research Unit, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA.
²⁰ School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA.
²¹ Berkeley Initiative for Global Change Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
²² Yunnan Academy of Biodiversity, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, China.
²³ Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40546, USA.
²⁴ 1] Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology, Melbourne, c/o School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia [2] School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia.
²⁵ Department of Zoology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA.
²⁶ CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Wembley, WA 6913, Australia.
²⁷ Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
²⁸ 1] School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK [2] National Centre for Biological Sciences, GKVK Campus, Bangalore 560065, India.
²⁹ Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK.

PMID: 24531763
DOI: 10.1038/nature13014

Free article

Multicenter Study

Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands

Yann Hautier et al. Nature. 2014.

Free article

. 2014 Apr 24;508(7497):521-5.

doi: 10.1038/nature13014. Epub 2014 Feb 16.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ 1] Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA [2] Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
² Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA.
³ Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, USA.
⁴ Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
⁵ Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany.
⁶ Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada.
⁷ Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK.
⁸ School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
⁹ 1] Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia [2] School of Natural Sciences, Department of Zoology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
¹⁰ State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, Research Station of Alpine Meadow and Wetland Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
¹¹ Department of Biology, MSC03-2020, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA.
¹² Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC) (CONICET-UNMdP), Mar del Plata 7600, Argentina.
¹³ Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
¹⁵ United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Grassland Soil and Water Research Lab, Temple, Texas 76502, USA.
¹⁶ Queensland University of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, Brisbane 4000, Australia.
¹⁷ Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
¹⁸ United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Agroecosystem Management Research Unit, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA.
²⁰ School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA.
²¹ Berkeley Initiative for Global Change Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
²² Yunnan Academy of Biodiversity, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, China.
²³ Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40546, USA.
²⁴ 1] Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology, Melbourne, c/o School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia [2] School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia.
²⁵ Department of Zoology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA.
²⁶ CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Wembley, WA 6913, Australia.
²⁷ Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
²⁸ 1] School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK [2] National Centre for Biological Sciences, GKVK Campus, Bangalore 560065, India.
²⁹ Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK.

PMID: 24531763
DOI: 10.1038/nature13014

Abstract

Studies of experimental grassland communities 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. However, it remains unknown whether these findings are relevant to natural ecosystems, especially those for which species diversity is threatened by anthropogenic global change. 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 globally. 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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References

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Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands

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Eutrophication weakens stabilizing effects of diversity in natural grasslands

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