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Research article2010Peer reviewedOpen access

General stabilizing effects of plant diversity on grassland productivity through population asynchrony and overyielding

Hector, A.; Hautier, Y.; Saner, P.; Wacker, L.; Bagchi, R.; Joshi, J.; Scherer-Lorenzen, M.; Spehn, E. M.; Bazeley-White, E.; Weilenmann, M.; Caldeira, M. C.; Dimitrakopoulos, P. G.; Finn, J. A.; Huss-Danell, K.; Jumpponen, A.; Mulder, C. P. H.; Palmborg, C.; Pereira, J. S.; Siamantziouras, A. S. D.; Terry, A. C.;
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

BIODEPTH project; biodiversity; ecosystem functioning; insurance effect; overyielding; stability

Published in

Ecology
2010, Volume: 91, number: 8, pages: 2213-2220

      SLU Authors

    • Huss-Danell, Kerstin

      • Department of Agricultural Research for Northern Sweden, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

      • Palmborg, Cecilia

        • Department of Agricultural Research for Northern Sweden, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

      Sustainable Development Goals

      SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

      UKÄ Subject classification

      Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
      Agricultural Science

      Publication identifier

      DOI: https://doi.org/10.1890/09-1162.1

      Permanent link to this page (URI)

      https://res.slu.se/id/publ/31661