Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, China.
Nat Commun. 2017 May 10;8:15378. doi: 10.1038/ncomms15378.
Anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a critical environmental problem, prompting frequent investigations into its consequences for various ecological systems. Few studies, however, have explored the effect of climate change on ecological stability and the underlying mechanisms. We conduct a field experiment to assess the influence of warming and altered precipitation on the temporal stability of plant community biomass in an alpine grassland located on the Tibetan Plateau. We find that whereas precipitation alteration does not influence biomass temporal stability, warming lowers stability through reducing the degree of species asynchrony. Importantly, biomass temporal stability is not influenced by plant species diversity, but is largely determined by the temporal stability of dominant species and asynchronous population dynamics among the coexisting species. Our findings suggest that ongoing and future climate change may alter stability properties of ecological communities, potentially hindering their ability to provide ecosystem services for humanity.
人为气候变化已成为一个关键的环境问题，促使人们频繁研究其对各种生态系统的影响。然而，很少有研究探讨气候变化对生态稳定性及其潜在机制的影响。我们进行了一项实地实验，以评估在青藏高原的高寒草原上，气候变暖及降水改变对植物群落生物量时间稳定性的影响。我们发现，降水改变不会影响生物量的时间稳定性，而变暖则通过降低物种间的不同步程度来降低稳定性。重要的是，生物量的时间稳定性不受植物物种多样性的影响，而是主要由优势物种的时间稳定性和共存物种中种群动态的异步性决定。我们的研究结果表明，当前和未来的气候变化可能会改变生态群落的稳定性特征，从而可能削弱它们为人类提供生态系统服务的能力。
