News Release

Aridity, biodiversity, and ecosystem stability

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

A study explores the effects of climate on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Maintaining stable delivery of essential ecosystem services, such as food, carbon sequestration, and soil fertility, under climate change is a pressing concern. Ecosystem stability tends to increase with biodiversity, but whether this relationship will continue to hold in a changing climate remains unclear. To determine the influence of climate on the biodiversity-stability relationship, Pablo García-Palacios and colleagues conducted a field survey of plant diversity in more than 100 dryland ecosystems on six continents, and combined the results with 14 years' worth of satellite-based primary productivity estimates. Under arid conditions, ecosystem stability increased with increasing plant species richness and decreased with increasing plant functional diversity, measured as the variance in specific leaf area. At low aridity, stability was not significantly associated with richness, and stability increased with functional diversity. The results suggest ways to adjust land management strategies for increasing ecosystem stability under varying climatic conditions, according to the authors.

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Article #18-00425: "Climate mediates the biodiversity-ecosystem stability relationship globally," by Pablo García-Palacios, Nicolas Gross, Juan Gaitán and Fernando T. Maestre.

MEDIA CONTACT: Pablo García-Palacios, King Juan Carlos University, Móstoles, SPAIN; tel: +34-606-69-03-07; e-mail: pablo.garcia.pala@gmail.com


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