Theoretical models suggest that there could be multiple relationships between diversity and stability, depending on how we define stability . Stability can be defined at the ecosystem level — for example, a rancher might be interested in the ability of a grassland ecosystem to maintain primary production for cattle forage across several years that may vary in their average temperature and precipitation.
Figure 1 shows how having multiple species present in a plant community can stabilize ecosystem processes if species vary in their responses to environmental fluctuations such that an increased abundance of one species can compensate for the decreased abundance of another. Biologically diverse communities are also more likely to contain species that confer resilience to that ecosystem because as a community accumulates species, there is a higher chance of any one of them having traits that enable them to adapt to a changing environment. Such species could buffer the system against the loss of other species.
Figure 1 |
In contrast, if stability is defined at the species level, then more diverse assemblages can actually have lower species-level stability. This is because there is a limit to the number of individuals that can be packed into a particular community, such that as the number of species in the community goes up, the average population sizes of the species in the community goes down. For example, in Figure 2, each of the simple communities can only contain three individuals, so as the number of species in the community goes up, the probability of having a large number of individuals of any given species goes down. The smaller the population size of a particular species, the more likely it is to go extinct locally, due to random — stochastic — fluctuations, so at higher species richness levels there should be a greater risk of local extinctions. Thus, if stability is defined in terms of maintaining specific populations or species in a community, then increasing diversity in randomly assembled communities should confer a greater chance of destabilizing the system.
Figure 2 |
Cedar Creek Biodiversity Experiment
This experiment determines effects of plant species numbers and functional traits on community and ecosystem dynamics and functioning. It manipulates the number of plant species in 168 plots, each 9 m x 9 m, by imposing plant species numbers of 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 perennial grassland species. The species planted in a plot were randomly chosen from a pool of 18 species (4 species, each, of C4 grasses, C3 grasses, legumes, non-legume forbs; 2 species of woody plants). Its high replication (about 35 plots at each level of diversity) and large plots allow observation of responses of herbivorous, parasitoid and predator insects and allow additional treatments to be nested within plots. Planted in 1994, it has been annually sampled since 1996 for plant aboveground biomass and plant species abundances and for insect diversity and species abundances. Root mass, soil nitrate, light interception, biomass of invading plant species, and C and N levels in soils, roots, and aboveground biomass have been determined periodically. In addition, soil microbial processes and abundances of mycorrhizal fungi, soil bacteria and other fungi, N mineralization rates, patterns of N uptake by various species, and invading plant species, have been periodically measured in subprojects in the Biodiversity Experiment.
Key Results
Plant biomass production increased with diversity because of complementary interactions among species and not because of selection (sampling) effects .
Foliar fungal disease incidence decreased at higher diversity because of greater distance between individuals of a species, and resultant lower rates of disease spread.
Greater plant diversity led to greater diversity of herbivorous insects, and this effect continued up the food web to predator and parasitoid insects.
Fewer novel plant species invaded higher diversity treatments because of their lower soil NO3 levels, greater neighborhood crowding and competition, and greater chance that functionally similar species would occur in a given neighborhood .
Greater plant species numbers led to greater ecosystem stability (lower year-to-year variation in total plant biomass) but to lower species stability (greater year-to-year variation in abundances of individual species), with the stabilizing effect of diversity mainly attributable to statistical averaging effects and overyielding effects .
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