Community stability, complexity and species life history strategies

Lepš, Jan; Osbornová-Kosinová, Jana; Rejmánek, Marcel

doi:10.1007/bf00120678

Cited by 283 publications

(171 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…There are several components of population stability (Harrison 1979), among which temporal stability (also referred to as constancy, or its opposite, temporal variation or variability) is probably the most frequently studied. It has been suggested that slow-growing and long-lived species might respond less rapidly to environmental changes, conferring them greater population temporal stability (Lepš et al 1982, MacGillivray et al 1995, Grime et al 2000. This trend has been documented in insects, where species with low population growth rate exhibited greater population temporal stability (Spitzer and Lepš 1988); similar patterns have also been suggested for long-living adults in plants (Chesson 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Plant functional traits as determinants of population stability

Májeková

Bello

Doležal

et al. 2014

Ecology

101

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Abstract. Understanding the processes regulating population temporal stability is important to infer species coexistence and ecosystem stability patterns. It has been hypothesized that population temporal stability could be driven by functional trade-offs in resource acquisition and growth rate strategies. We tested this hypothesis by analyzing a 13-year data set from a mown grassland community in a factorial experiment with fertilization and dominant removal as the main treatment effects. Population temporal stability, measured as a coefficient of variation of species' biomass over time, was related to plant traits covering different functional trade-offs. These included plant height, leaf dry matter content (LDMC), specific leaf area, seed mass, leaf d 13 C, and rooting depth. Three of the traits (LDMC, rooting depth, and leaf d 13 C) had significant relationships with population temporal stability, even after accounting for species' phylogenetic relatedness. Higher values of LDMC, the best predictor, were consistently associated with greater population temporal stability across all experimental conditions. This suggests a functional trade-off along the leaf economics spectrum, with more conservative, slow-growing species being more stable over time. Incorporating functional trade-offs into the assessment of population temporal dynamics will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the processes that sustain the stability of ecosystems and species coexistence.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Plant functional traits as determinants of population stability

Májeková

Bello

Doležal

et al. 2014

Ecology

101

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“…EP such as primary productivity, nutrient cycling, and trophic transfer to herbivores (3,10,(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) that appear consistent across biomes, ecosystems, and floras (15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Links of local CWM of such plant traits with biogeochemistry-derived ES have been documented in several cases (21)(22)(23)(24)(25).…”

Section: The Mass Ratio Hypothesis: a Cornerstone Of Fd-ep Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments

Dı́az

Lavorel

Bello

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

1,346

1,191

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Global environmental change affects the sustained provision of a wide set of ecosystem services. Although the delivery of ecosystem services is strongly affected by abiotic drivers and direct land use effects, it is also modulated by the functional diversity of biological communities (the value, range, and relative abundance of functional traits in a given ecosystem). The focus of this article is on integrating the different possible mechanisms by which functional diversity affects ecosystem properties that are directly relevant to ecosystem services. We propose a systematic way for progressing in understanding how land cover change affects these ecosystem properties through functional diversity modifications. Models on links between ecosystem properties and the local mean, range, and distribution of plant trait values are numerous, but they have been scattered in the literature, with varying degrees of empirical support and varying functional diversity components analyzed. Here we articulate these different components in a single conceptual and methodological framework that allows testing them in combination. We illustrate our approach with examples from the literature and apply the proposed framework to a grassland system in the central French Alps in which functional diversity, by responding to land use change, alters the provision of ecosystem services important to local stakeholders. We claim that our framework contributes to opening a new area of research at the interface of land change science and fundamental ecology.biodiversity ͉ land change ͉ mass ratio hypothesis ͉ plant functional traits G lobal environmental changes, including land use and land cover changes, have considerable impacts on the ecological properties of ecosystems and therefore on the ecosystem services (ES) that societies derive from them (1). Although links between ecosystem properties (EP) and ES are not always trivial, many ES and their changes can be reasonably quantified by EP that are routinely measured in ecological studies (2). Global change effects on EP can be direct, through their effects on physical and chemical processes and on the metabolism and behavior of organisms. Global change drivers can also influence EP indirectly through their impacts on biodiversity, either through their effects on local biota or by altering the ability of organisms to disperse through landscapes. Relevant changes in biodiversity are manifested through changes in plant functional diversity (FD), i.e., the value, range, and relative abundance of plant functional traits in a given ecosystem (2). Although often subtler than direct effects of global change drivers (3, 4), these indirect biotic effects remain a major source of uncertainty in predicting the impacts of global change on ES provision.Conceptual models accounting for links between the functional trait values of local plant communities and EP are scattered in the literature, and the conceptual connections between them are not always clear. We articulate the most important of those models i...

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“…For example, early-and late-successional communities differ not only in their stability characteristics, but also in their species richness. Nevertheless, both differences are dependent on the composition of prevailing life-history strategies in a community (Lepš et al 1982, Lepš 1990). This might suggest that an experimental approach would be more profitable.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Separating the chance effect from other diversity effects in the functioning of plant communities

Lepš¹,

Brown²,

Len³

et al. 2001

Oikos

139

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Separating the chance effect from other diversity effects in the functioning of plant communitiesLeps, J; Brown, VK; Len, TAD; Gormsen, Dagmar; Hedlund, Katarina; Kailova, J; Korthals, GW; Mortimer, SR; Rodriguez-Barrueco, C; Roy, J; Regina, IS; van Dijk, C; van der Putten, WH Published in: Oikos DOI: 10.1034/j. 1600-0706.2001.920115.x 2001 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Leps, J., Brown, VK., Len, TAD., Gormsen, D., Hedlund, K., Kailova, J., ... van der Putten, WH. (2001). Separating the chance effect from other diversity effects in the functioning of plant communities. Oikos, 92(1), 123-134. https://doi.org/10.1034/j. 1600-0706.2001.920115.x General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. The effect of plant species diversity on productivity and competitive ability was studied in an experiment carried out simultaneously in five European countries: Czech Republic (CZ), the Netherlands (NL), Sweden (SE), Spain (SP), and United Kingdom (UK). The aim was to separate the 'chance' or 'sampling effect' (increasing the number of sown species increases the probability that a species able 'to do a job' will be included) from the complementarity effect (species-rich communities are better able to exploit resources and to take care of ecosystem functions than species-poor communities). In the experiment, low diversity (LD) and high diversity (HD) mixtures of grassland species were sown into fields taken out of arable cultivation. The HD mixture consisted of five grass species, five legumes and five other forbs. The LD mixtures consisted of two grasses, one legume and one other forb, with different plant species combinations in each replicate block. The design of the experiment was constructed in such a way that the total number of seeds of each species over all the replications was exactly the same in HD and LD treatments, and the total number of grass seeds, leguminous seeds and other forb seeds were the same in both LD and HD. The responses measured were the total above-ground biomass (as a measure of productivity) and the average number of naturally establishing species in a plot (as a measure of the competitive ability of the mixture), both measured in the third year of the experiment. The results show that, on average, the HD plots performed better (i...

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Community stability, complexity and species life history strategies

Cited by 283 publications

References 47 publications

Plant functional traits as determinants of population stability

Plant functional traits as determinants of population stability

Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments

Separating the chance effect from other diversity effects in the functioning of plant communities

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