The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Diversity and Stability of Ecological Communities: A Comment on the Role of Empiricism in Ecology
Abstract
The diversity-stability hypothesis developed over the past 25 years appears widely misunderstood by ecologists, although it simply states that species diversity mediates community functional stability through compensating interactions to environmental fluctuations among co-occurring species. Fluctuations in the abundances of species with different adaptive modes may be a mechanism stabilizing community function in a varying environment. The available empirical evidence, including data from an experimental perturbation of successional old fields and data on the impact of environmental fluctuations on properties of grasslands in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem of Tanzania and Kenya, suggests that the hypothesis is true at the primary producer level. As components of natural science, models are true only insofar as they are verified as accurate descriptions of the systems they purportedly characterize. The data on diversity-stability relationships in plant communities indicate that the traditional verbal model is considerably more robust in application than recent "more rigorous" mathematical models.
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Citations
Cites
The theory of open systems in physics and biology
von Bertalanffy, L. (1950) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.111.2872.23 · Cited by 1,714
Cited by
EFFECTS OF BIODIVERSITY ON ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING: A CONSENSUS OF CURRENT KNOWLEDGE
Hooper, D. U., Chapin, F. S., Ewel, J. J., Hector, A., Inchausti, P., Lavorel, S., Lawton, J. H., Lodge, D. M., Loreau, M., Naeem, S., et al. (2005) · Ecological Monographs · doi:10.1890/04-0922 · Cited by 8,046
Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: Current knowledge and future challenges
Loreau, M., Naeem, S., Inchausti, P., Bengtsson, J., Grime, J. P., Hector, A., Hooper, D. U., Huston, M. A., Raffaelli, D., Schmid, B., et al. (2001) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1064088 · Cited by 4,649
Consequences of changing biodiversity
Chapin III, F. S., Zavaleta, E. S., Eviner, V. T., Naylor, R. L., Vitousek, P. M., Reynolds, H. L., Hooper, D. U., Lavorel, S., Sala, O. E., Hobbie, S. E., et al. (2000) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35012241 · Cited by 4,282
Biodiversity and ecosystem productivity in a fluctuating environment: The insurance hypothesis
Yachi, S., & Loreau, M. (1999) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.96.4.1463 · Cited by 3,211
Productivity and sustainability influenced by biodiversity in grassland ecosystems.
Tilman, D., Wedin, D., & Knops, J. (1996) · Nature · doi:10.1038/379718a0 · Cited by 2,803
Metadata
- Authors
- McNaughton, S. J.
- Venue
- The American Naturalist
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1977-05
- Volume
- 111
- Issue
- 979
- Pages
- 515-525
- ISSN
- 0003-0147 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5323
- OpenAlex
- W2050781579
- Cited by
- 684
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 5.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Diversity and Stability of Ecological Communities: A Comment on the Role of Empiricism in Ecology. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/283181
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- McNaughton, S. J. (1977). Diversity and Stability of Ecological Communities: A Comment on the Role of Empiricism in Ecology. The American Naturalist. https://doi.org/10.1086/283181
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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