Functional Redundancy Instead of Species Redundancy Determines Community Stability in a Typical Steppe of Inner Mongolia.

Frank Yonghong Li,Yong Ding,Qing Zhang,Fang Han,Jianming Niu,Wenjing Ma,Zhili He,Saruul Kang,Xiaoli Sun

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0145605

Frank Yonghong Li, Yong Ding + Show 7 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145605

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Abstract

BackgroundThe redundancy hypothesis predicts that the species redundancy in a plant community enhances community stability. However, numerous studies in recent years questioned the positive correlation between redundancy and stability.MethodologyWe explored the relationship between the species redundancy, functional redundancy and community stability in typical steppe grassland in Northern China by sampling grassland vegetation along a gradient of resource availability caused by micro-topography. We aimed to test whether community redundancy enhanced community stability, and to quantify the relative importance of species redundancy and functional redundancy in maintaining community stability.ResultsOur results showed that the spatial stability of plant community production increases with increased supply of soil resources, and the functional redundancy instead of species diversity or species redundancy is correlated with the community stability. Our results supported the redundancy hypothesis and have implications for sustainable grassland management.

Highlights

The relationship between species diversity and ecosystem stability and its maintenance mechanism has been one of the hotspots in ecology research [1,2,3]
Our results showed that the spatial stability of plant community production increases with increased supply of soil resources, and the functional redundancy instead of species diversity or species redundancy is correlated with the community stability
Bello et al [20] proposed a new method to calculate the functional redundancy, and believed that the functional redundancy is a part of species diversity that is not manifested with functional diversity, that is, the functional redundancy is the difference between species diversity and functional diversity

Summary

Introduction

The relationship between species diversity and ecosystem stability and its maintenance mechanism has been one of the hotspots in ecology research [1,2,3]. Human-driven loss of diversity might reduce ecosystem stability [4], but the generalizations remain unclear Both positive [1,2,3, 5] and negative correlations [6] as well as nonlinear relationships [7] are found between diversity and stability. The redundancy hypothesis proposed by Walker [11] has increasingly become an important concept in understanding the ecological values of biodiversity. The linkage between the ecological factors and stability changes with scale and impact factors [26] All these points need to be considered to determine the most applicable redundancy hypothesis for the study of relationship between diversity and stability. Numerous studies in recent years questioned the positive correlation between redundancy and stability.

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