Grazing-induced biodiversity loss impairs grassland ecosystem stability at multiple scales
Liang, Maowei; Liang, Cunzhu; Hautier, Yann; Wilcox, Kevin R; Wang, Shaopeng
(2021) Ecology Letters, volume 24, issue 10, pp. 2054 - 2064
(Letter)
Abstract
Livestock grazing is a major driver shaping grassland biodiversity, functioning and stability. Whether grazing impacts on grassland ecosystems are scale-dependent remains unclear. Here, we conducted a sheep-grazing experiment in a temperate grassland to test grazing effects on the temporal stability of productivity across scales. We found that grazing increased species
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stability but substantially decreased local community stability due to reduced asynchronous dynamics among species within communities. The negative effect of grazing on local community stability propagated to reduce stability at larger spatial scales. By decreasing biodiversity both within and across communities, grazing reduced biological insurance effects and hence the upscaling of stability from species to communities and further to larger spatial scales. Our study provides the first evidence for the scale dependence of grazing effects on grassland stability through biodiversity. We suggest that ecosystem management should strive to maintain biodiversity across scales to achieve sustainability of grassland ecosystem functions and services.
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Keywords: asynchrony, grazing intensity, herbivory, metacommunity, scale dependence, sheep, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
ISSN: 1461-023X
Publisher: NLM (Medline)
Note: Funding Information: This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0500503), the Natural Science Foundation of China (31988102, 31870505), and the Open Project Program of ‘Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Ecology and Resources Use of the Mongolian Plateau (KF2020003). We appreciate fieldwork assistance from Zhiyong Li, Bailing Miao, Yantao Wu, Yabo Shi, Zhiwei Guo, Dongsheng Xie, Xuan Wang, Lei Dong, Zijing Li, and the staff members of the National Observing Station of Xilinhot, China. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
(Peer reviewed)
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