Abstract
BackgroundTheory suggests that biodiversity can act as a buffer against disturbances and environmental variability via two major mechanisms: Firstly, a stabilising effect by decreasing the temporal variance in ecosystem functioning due to compensatory processes; and secondly, a performance enhancing effect by raising the level of community response through the selection of better performing species. Empirical evidence for the stabilizing effect of biodiversity is readily available, whereas experimental confirmation of the performance-enhancing effect of biodiversity is sparse.ResultsHere, we test the effect of different environmental regimes (constant versus fluctuating temperature) on bacterial biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relations. We show that positive effects of species richness on ecosystem functioning are enhanced by stronger temperature fluctuations due to the increased performance of individual species.ConclusionsOur results provide evidence for the performance enhancing effect and suggest that selection towards functionally dominant species is likely to benefit the maintenance of ecosystem functioning under more variable conditions.
Highlights
Theory suggests that biodiversity can act as a buffer against disturbances and environmental variability via two major mechanisms: Firstly, a stabilising effect by decreasing the temporal variance in ecosystem functioning due to compensatory processes; and secondly, a performance enhancing effect by raising the level of community response through the selection of better performing species
It is hypothesized that species richness has an insurance effect and can maintain or increase ecosystem functioning via two major mechanisms [4]
In congruence with our hypotheses, we found that environmental variability strengthened the effect of species richness on ecosystem functioning and provided clear evidence of a performing-enhancing role of biodiversity under fluctuating conditions
Summary
Theory suggests that biodiversity can act as a buffer against disturbances and environmental variability via two major mechanisms: Firstly, a stabilising effect by decreasing the temporal variance in ecosystem functioning due to compensatory processes; and secondly, a performance enhancing effect by raising the level of community response through the selection of better performing species. Several experimental studies have addressed the buffering effect of biodiversity on temporal variance in ecosystem functioning in systems with multiple pulse disturbances (i.e. fluctuating environments), only to find stabilizing, destabilizing or neutral effects of increasing diversity on stability (reviewed by [8]). Other studies have investigated the effect of biodiversity on ecosystem resistance and resilience in response to single disturbances [9] Results from these studies have not always supported the insurance hypothesis: Pfisterer and Schmid [10], for example, found that species richness decreased both resistance and resilience, in direct contradiction to theoretical predictions. Explicit experimental demonstrations of the performanceenhancing effect are sparse [15], and most studies provide no, or only limited, support for a positive effect of diversity on the mean or magnitude of an ecosystem function under fluctuating or perturbed conditions [10,16,17,18,19]
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