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Competition02:34

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When organisms require the same limited resources within an environment, they may have to compete for them. Competition is a net-negative interaction. Even if two competing individuals or populations do not interact directly, the overall fitness of both competitors is lowered as a result of not having full access to the limited resource.
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All organisms have a position within an ecosystem. The complete set of living and nonliving factors—including food resources, climate, and terrain—that define the position of a given organism are collectively referred to as the organism’s ecological niche.
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Updated: Nov 12, 2025

JenaTron - An Experimental Approach to Study the Effects of Plant History and Soil History on Grassland Ecosystem Functioning
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How complementarity and selection affect the relationship between ecosystem functioning and stability.

Shaopeng Wang1, Forest Isbell2, Wanlu Deng3

  • 1Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Science, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.

Ecology
|March 20, 2021
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Biodiversity mechanisms like complementarity enhance ecosystem stability, while selection impairs it by favoring risk-prone species. This reveals how these processes influence the ecosystem functioning-stability relationship.

Keywords:
biodiversitycomplementarityfunctioninginvariabilityportfolio effectresilienceresistanceselectiontrade-off

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Biodiversity Science
  • Ecosystem Dynamics

Background:

  • Understanding the relationship between ecosystem functioning and stability is challenging due to separate research on biotic mechanisms.
  • Biodiversity mechanisms, including complementarity and selection, are known to influence ecosystem biomass production.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how complementarity and selection affect ecosystem stability using community models.
  • To clarify the interplay between biodiversity mechanisms, ecosystem functioning, and stability.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized community models for analytic and simulation-based examinations.
  • Analyzed the impact of complementarity and selection on ecosystem stability and functioning.

Main Results:

  • Complementarity was found to promote ecosystem stability, while selection was found to impair it.
  • Selection weakens portfolio effects and favors high-productivity, low-tolerance species, reducing stability.
  • Complementarity enhances stability by increasing portfolio effects and reducing risk-prone species abundance.

Conclusions:

  • Ecosystem functioning and stability can exhibit synergy (complementarity prevails) or trade-off (selection prevails).
  • The relationship between ecosystem functioning and stability is generally positive but can be negative when selection co-varies with species richness.
  • Findings offer novel insights into the functioning-stability relationship with implications for ecological research and management.