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Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat Fragmentation

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Ecological Disturbance

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An ecological disturbance is a temporary disruption in the environment resulting from abiotic, biotic, or anthropogenic factors, causing a pronounced change in an ecosystem. The impact of an ecological disturbance, which can depend on its intensity, frequency, and spatial distribution, plays a significant role in shaping the species diversity within the ecosystem.

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Biodiversity describes the variety of living things at multiple organizational levels: genetic, species and ecosystem diversity. Species diversity includes all branches of the evolutionary tree from single-celled prokaryotic organisms, bacteria, and archaea, to the eukaryotic kingdoms: plants; animals; fungi; and protists. To date, there have been about 1.75 million species identified, and new species are discovered every week.

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JenaTron - An Experimental Approach to Study the Effects of Plant History and Soil History on Grassland Ecosystem Functioning

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Partitioning Net Biodiversity Effects on Ecosystem Resistance and Resilience.

Mario Desallais¹, Jean-François Arnoldi¹, Michel Loreau²

¹Station D'écologie Théorique et Expérimentale (SETE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Moulis, France.

Ecology Letters

|November 9, 2025

Summary

Biodiversity enhances ecosystem stability through selection and complementarity effects. Diverse grasslands resist and recover from drought by favoring less sensitive species and promoting resilience in the least resilient ones.

Keywords:

community drought ecosystem functioning press perturbation recovery species richness species traits stability

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Ecosystem Stability
Biodiversity Research

Background:

Understanding biodiversity's role in ecosystem stability is crucial.
Recent decades have seen advances, yet mechanisms require further elucidation.

Purpose of the Study:

To reveal novel selection and complementarity effects influencing ecosystem stability.
To partition and clarify the mechanisms by which biodiversity impacts ecosystem resistance and resilience.

Main Methods:

Analysis of a mechanistic model of grassland ecosystems.
Partitioning of biodiversity effects into selection and complementarity components.
Simulation of ecosystem response to drought perturbations.

Main Results:

Biodiversity enhances ecosystem resistance via species' reduced sensitivity and selection favoring less sensitive species.
Ecosystem resilience is promoted by species resilience and selection favoring resilient species.
A novel selection effect benefits least resilient species, enhancing overall resilience.

Conclusions:

Functional complementarity and life-history strategies explain how diverse grasslands resist and recover from drought.
The study provides a partitioning framework to precisely explain biodiversity-ecosystem stability relationships.
Findings deepen the understanding of ecological assembly and its impact on ecosystem functioning.