Climate mediates the biodiversity-ecosystem stability relationship globally.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Global Change Biology
• Ecosystem Science

Background:

• The insurance hypothesis posits that biodiversity enhances ecosystem stability.
• Previous research on biodiversity-stability relationships is limited by local studies and narrow climatic conditions.
• Climate change impacts how plant diversity influences ecosystem stability, necessitating global investigations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how climate mediates the relationship between plant diversity (taxonomical and functional) and ecosystem stability globally.
• To assess the relative importance of plant diversity, climate, and soil factors in determining ecosystem stability.

Main Methods:

• Coupled 14 years of remote sensing data on plant biomass with field surveys of diversity.
• Studied 123 dryland ecosystems across all continents except Antarctica.
• Measured ecosystem stability as the ratio of temporal mean biomass to its standard deviation.

Main Results:

• Explained 73% of variation in ecosystem stability across diverse conditions.
• Plant diversity's role in ecosystem stability was comparable to climatic and soil factors.
• A significant climate dependency was observed: leaf trait diversity stabilized ecosystems at low aridity, while species richness was more important at high aridity.

Conclusions:

• Climate strongly mediates the biodiversity-ecosystem stability relationship.
• Promoting functional plant diversity is crucial for stability in low-aridity environments.
• Enhancing taxonomic plant diversity (species richness) is vital for stability in high-aridity environments to ensure consistent ecosystem services.