Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station CNRS and Paul Sabatier University, 09200, Moulis, France.
Zoology Department, School of Natural Sciences Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Ecol Lett. 2019 Oct;22(10):1557-1567. doi: 10.1111/ele.13345. Epub 2019 Jul 16.
Empirical knowledge of diversity-stability relationships is mostly based on the analysis of temporal variability. Variability, however, often depends on external factors that act as disturbances, which makes comparisons across systems difficult to interpret. Here, we show how variability can reveal inherent stability properties of ecological communities. This requires that we abandon one-dimensional representations, in which a single variability measurement is taken as a proxy for how stable a system is, and instead consider the whole set of variability values generated by all possible stochastic perturbations. Despite this complexity, in species-rich systems, a generic pattern emerges from community assembly, relating variability to the abundance of perturbed species. Strikingly, the contrasting contributions of different species abundance classes to variability, driven by different types of perturbations, can lead to opposite diversity-stability patterns. We conclude that a multidimensional perspective on variability helps reveal the dynamical richness of ecological systems and the underlying meaning of their stability patterns.
有关多样性-稳定性关系的经验知识主要基于对时间可变性的分析。然而，可变性通常取决于作为干扰因素的外部因素，这使得跨系统的比较难以解释。在这里，我们展示了可变性如何揭示生态群落固有的稳定性特征。这要求我们放弃一维表示，在这种表示中，单一的可变性测量值被用作系统稳定性的代理，而不是考虑由所有可能的随机扰动产生的整个可变性值集。尽管存在这种复杂性，但在物种丰富的系统中，从群落组装中会出现一个通用模式，将可变性与受扰物种的丰度联系起来。引人注目的是，不同类型的扰动导致不同物种丰度类对可变性的贡献相反，从而导致多样性-稳定性模式相反。我们得出的结论是，对可变性的多维视角有助于揭示生态系统的动态丰富性及其稳定性模式的潜在意义。
