General destabilizing effects of eutrophication on grassland productivity at multiple spatial scales

• Autores: Hautier, Yann; Zhang, Pengfei; Loreau, Michael; Wilcox, Kevin R.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Tognetti, Pedro Maximiliano
• Año de publicación: 2020
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Fuente: Nature communications; Vol.11; art.5375; http://www.springer.com/
• Materia: EUTROPHICATION; ECOLOGY; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; PLANT DIVERSITY; ENVIRONMENTAL FLUCTUATIONS; PRESERVATION; LARGE SCALE STABILITY; COMMUNITIES; CONSERVATION
• Institución: Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía

Fil: Hautier, Yann. Utrecht University. Department of Biology. Ecology and Biodiversity Group. The Netherlands.
Fil: Zhang, Pengfei. Utrecht University. Department of Biology. Ecology and Biodiversity Group. The Netherlands. - Lanzhou University State. School of Life Science. Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro - Ecosystems. People’s Republic of China. - Institute of Eco-Environmental Forensics of Shandong University. People’s Republic of China. - Ministry of Justice Hub for Research and Practice in Eco - Environmental Forensics. People’s Republic of China.
Fil: Loreau, Michael. Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling. Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station.CNRS. France.
Fil: Wilcox, Kevin R. University of Wyoming. Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. Laramie, WY, USA.
Fil: Seabloom, Eric W. University of Minessota. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. Minessota, USA.
Fil: Tognetti, Pedro Maximiliano. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA). Buenos Aires, Argentina. - CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant diversity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated. Here, we determine the relationship between plant diversity and temporal stability of productivity for 243 plant communities from 42 grasslands across the globe and quantify the effect of chronic fertilization on these relationships. Unfertilized local communities with more plant species exhibit greater asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations, resulting in greater local stability (alpha stability). Moreover, neighborhood communities that have greater spatial variation in plant species composition within sites (higher beta diversity) have greater spatial synchrony of productivity among communities, resulting in greater stability at the larger scale (gamma stability). Importantly, fertilization consistently weakens the contribution of plant diversity to both of these stabilizing mechanisms, thus diminishing the positive effect of biodiversity on stability at differing spatial scales. Our findings suggest that preserving grassland functional stability requires conservation of plant diversity within and among ecological communities.
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