The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Ecosystem stability in space: α, β and γ variability
Abstract
The past two decades have seen great progress in understanding the mechanisms of ecosystem stability in local ecological systems. There is, however, an urgent need to extend existing knowledge to larger spatial scales to match the scale of management and conservation. Here, we develop a general theoretical framework to study the stability and variability of ecosystems at multiple scales. Analogously to the partitioning of biodiversity, we propose the concepts of alpha, beta and gamma variability. Gamma variability at regional (metacommunity) scale can be partitioned into local alpha variability and spatial beta variability, either multiplicatively or additively. On average, variability decreases from local to regional scales, which creates a negative variability–area relationship. Our partitioning framework suggests that mechanisms of regional ecosystem stability can be understood by investigating the influence of ecological factors on alpha and beta variability. Diversity can provide insurance effects at the various levels of variability, thus generating alpha, beta and gamma diversity–stability relationships. As a consequence, the loss of biodiversity and habitat impairs ecosystem stability at the regional scale. Overall, our framework enables a synthetic understanding of ecosystem stability at multiple scales and has practical implications for landscape management.
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Cites
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Self-citationBiodiversity and ecosystem productivity in a fluctuating environment: The insurance hypothesis
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Self-citationAggregation, Variance and the Mean
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Population diversity and the portfolio effect in an exploited species
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Global meta-analysis reveals no net change in local-scale plant biodiversity over time
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Self-citationFrom Populations to Ecosystems: Theoretical Foundations for a New Ecological Synthesis (MPB-46)
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Self-citationMacrosystems ecology: understanding ecological patterns and processes at continental scales
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Cited by
Rare species contribute disproportionately to the functional structure of species assemblages
Leitão, R. P., Zuanon, J., Villéger, S., Williams, S. E., Baraloto, C., Fortunel, C., Mendonça, F. P., & Mouillot, D. (2016) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2016.0084 · Cited by 499
Biodiversity and ecosystem stability across scales in metacommunities
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Metadata
- Authors
- Wang, S., & Loreau, M.
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2014-05-09
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 891-901
- ISSN
- 1461-023X (ISSN-L)
- 1461-0248
- OpenAlex
- W1966187999
- Cited by
- 281
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 14.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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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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