TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hector, Andy
A1  - Hautier, Yann
A1  - Saner, Philippe
A1  - Wacker, Lukas
A1  - Bagchi, Robert
A1  - Joshi, Jasmin Radha
A1  - Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael
A1  - Spehn, Eva M.
A1  - Bazeley-White, Ellen
A1  - Weilenmann, Markus
A1  - Caldeira, Maria da Conceição Brálio de Brito
A1  - Dimitrakopoulos, Panayiotis G.
A1  - Finn, John A.
A1  - Huss-Danell, Kerstin
A1  - Jumpponen, Ari
A1  - Mulder, Christa P. H.
A1  - Palmborg, Cecilia
A1  - Pereira, J. S.
A1  - Siamantziouras, Akis S. D.
A1  - Terry, Andrew C.
A1  - Troumbis, Andreas Y.
A1  - Schmid, Bernhard
A1  - Loreau, Michel
T1  - General stabilizing effects of plant diversity on grassland productivity through population asynchrony and overyielding
N2  - Insurance effects of biodiversity can stabilize the functioning of multispecies ecosystems against environmental variability when differential species' responses lead to asynchronous population dynamics. When responses are not perfectly positively correlated, declines in some populations are compensated by increases in others, smoothing variability in ecosystem productivity. This variance reduction effect of biodiversity is analogous to the risk- spreading benefits of diverse investment portfolios in financial markets. We use data from the BIODEPTH network of grassland biodiversity experiments to perform a general test for stabilizing effects of plant diversity on the temporal variability of individual species, functional groups, and aggregate communities. We tested three potential mechanisms: reduction of temporal variability through population asynchrony; enhancement of long-term average performance through positive selection effects; and increases in the temporal mean due to overyielding. Our results support a stabilizing effect of diversity on the temporal variability of grassland aboveground annual net primary production through two mechanisms. Two-species communities with greater population asynchrony were more stable in their average production over time due to compensatory fluctuations. Overyielding also stabilized productivity by increasing levels of average biomass production relative to temporal variability. However, there was no evidence for a performance-enhancing effect on the temporal mean through positive selection effects. In combination with previous work, our results suggest that stabilizing effects of diversity on community productivity through population asynchrony and overyielding appear to be general in grassland ecosystems.
Y1  - 2010
UR  - http://esapubs.org/esapubs/journals/ecology.htm
SN  - 0012-9658
ER  -