THE INFLUENCE OF SPECIES DIVERSITY AND STRESS INTENSITY ON COMMUNITY RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE

Recent theory, such as the insurance hypothesis, suggests that higher species diversity may dampen perturbation dynamics within a community. The dynamics of a rocky intertidal macroalgal community were evaluated using an experimentally induced heat stress applied at the end of a 15-mo manipulation of diversity. This pulse event produced a gradient of thermal stress within plots and, consequently, different degrees of perturbation. In gen- eral, the resistance of the community to the thermal stress was forecast by the pre-stress cover of dominant species, total algal cover, and standing biomass. Because higher diversity treatments, especially those containing the dominant algal group, fucoids, had higher overall abundance, highest diversity treatments were the most severely affected. The stress was also relatively nonselective, in that species were reduced in roughly equivalent proportions, suggesting an important distinction for predicting when diversity will not influence dis- turbance dynamics. The resilience of the community was strongly dependent on which species were initially present in the plots and the degree of disturbance. In highly disturbed areas, although the recovery trajectory was similar in early successional stages, differences emerged later; these differences appear to be attributable to the composition of the sur- rounding regeneration pool. For treatments not receiving the thermal stress, low-diversity plots without fucoids remained in states unlike the reference condition for most of the monitored resilience period. But plots in high-diversity treatments, even areas within plots that had experienced moderate disturbance, returned to states similar to the reference quick- ly. Thus, resilience (but not resistance) results are consistent with the insurance hypothesis. Overall, diversity's influence on community dynamics is complex and will depend on the characteristics of the stress as well as the characteristics of the species present in the

[1]  G. Allison.  The Implications of Experimental Design for Biodiversity Manipulations , 1999, The American Naturalist.

[2]  P. Glynn.  Community composition, structure, and interrelationships in the marine intertidal Endocladia muricata – Balanus glandula association in Monterey Bay, California , 1965 .

[3]  J. Connell,et al.  On the Evidence Needed to Judge Ecological Stability or Persistence , 1983, The American Naturalist.

[4]  J. P. Grime,et al.  Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning: Current Knowledge and Future Challenges , 2001, Science.

[5]  A. Chapman.  Functional ecology of fucoid algae: twenty-three years of progress , 1995 .

[6]  Jill McGrady-Steed,et al.  Biodiversity regulates ecosystem predictability , 1997, Nature.

[7]  R. Paine,et al.  Disturbance, patch formation, and community structure. , 1974, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  T. Farrell.  Community stability: effects of limpet removal and reintroduction in a rocky intertidal community , 1988, Oecologia.

[9]  Wayne P. Sousa,et al.  Intertidal Mosaics: Patch Size, Propagule Availability, and Spatially Variable Patterns of Succession , 1984 .

[10]  John H. Steele,et al.  A comparison of terrestrial and marine ecological systems , 1985, Nature.

[11]  Frédéric Guichard,et al.  Mussel Disturbance Dynamics: Signatures of Oceanographic Forcing from Local Interactions , 2003, The American Naturalist.

[12]  W. Sousa.  Disturbance in Marine Intertidal Boulder Fields: The Nonequilibrium Maintenance of Species Diversity , 1979 .

[13]  Stuart L. Pimm,et al.  Food web design and the effect of species deletion , 1980 .

[14]  I. Davison,et al.  STRESS TOLERANCE IN INTERTIDAL SEAWEEDS , 1996 .

[15]  Charles C. Elton.  The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants , 1959, Biodiversity & Conservation.

[16]  Douglas A. Frank,et al.  Stability increases with diversity in plant communities: empirical evidence from the 1988 Yellowstone drought , 1991 .

[17]  S. Sørensen,et al.  Ecosystem response of pasture soil communities to fumigation-induced microbial diversity reductions: an examination of the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship , 2000 .

[18]  W. Thurston.  The evidence , 1985 .

[19]  R. Paine,et al.  Intertidal Landscapes: Disturbance and the Dynamics of Pattern , 1981 .

[20]  D. Doak,et al.  Physical stress and diversity-productivity relationships: The role of positive interactions , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[21]  Pereira,et al.  Plant diversity and productivity experiments in european grasslands , 1999, Science.

[22]  J. Lawton,et al.  Declining biodiversity can alter the performance of ecosystems , 1994, Nature.

[23]  Wayne P. Sousa,et al.  Chapter 7 – Disturbance and Patch Dynamics on Rocky Intertidal Shores , 1985 .

[24]  J. Denslow.  Functional Group Diversity and Responses to Disturbance , 1996 .

[25]  F. James Rohlf,et al.  Biometry: The Principles and Practice of Statistics in Biological Research , 1969 .

[26]  Osman,et al.  Species Diversity and Invasion Resistance in a Marine Ecosystem. , 1999, Science.

[27]  R. Margalef,et al.  Diversity, stability and maturity in natural ecosystems , 1975 .

[28]  Charles C. Elton,et al.  The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants. , 1959 .

[29]  S. Pimm.  The complexity and stability of ecosystems , 1984, Nature.

[30]  S. McNaughton,et al.  Biodiversity and Function of Grazing Ecosystems , 1994 .

[31]  B. Schmid,et al.  Diversity-dependent production can decrease the stability of ecosystem functioning , 2002, Nature.

[32]  T. Farrell.  Succession in a rocky intertidal community; the importance of disturbance size and position within a disturbed patch , 1989 .

[33]  B. Menge,et al.  Community Regulation: Variation in Disturbance, Competition, and Predation in Relation to Environmental Stress and Recruitment , 1987, The American Naturalist.

[34]  Robert M. May,et al.  Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems , 2019, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[35]  Shahid Naeem,et al.  Biodiversity enhances ecosystem reliability , 1997, Nature.

[36]  M. Loreau,et al.  Phenotypic diversity and stability of ecosystem processes. , 1999, Theoretical population biology.

[37]  F. Rahel,et al.  The Hierarchical Nature of Community Persistence: A Problem of Scale , 1990, The American Naturalist.

[38]  L. Milne,et al.  The Balance of Nature , 1953, Oryx.

[39]  M. Hay.  The functional morphology of turf-forming seaweeds: persistence in stressful marine habitats , 1981 .

[40]  P. Dayton.  Competition, Disturbance, and Community Organization: The Provision and Subsequent Utilization of Space in a Rocky Intertidal Community , 1971 .

[41]  C. S. Holling.  Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems , 1973 .

[42]  A. M. Olson,et al.  Environmental Stress, Bottom-up Effects, and Community Dynamics: Integrating Molecular-Physiological and Ecological Approaches1 , 2002, Integrative and comparative biology.

[43]  M. Loreau,et al.  Biodiversity and ecosystem productivity in a fluctuating environment: the insurance hypothesis. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[44]  J. Downing,et al.  Biodiversity and stability in grasslands , 1996, Nature.

[45]  P. Reich,et al.  Effects of plant species richness on invasion dynamics, disease outbreaks, insect abundances and diversity. , 1999, Ecology letters.

[46]  W. L..  The Balance of Nature , 1870, Nature.

[47]  O. Springer-Verlag,et al.  Community stability: effects of limpet removal and reintroduction in a rocky intertidal community , 1988 .

[48]  J. Connell.  Chapter 2 – Ecology: Field Experiments in Marine Ecology , 1974 .

[49]  R. DeWreede,et al.  Effects of size and season of disturbance on algal patch recovery in a rocky intertidal community , 1996 .

[50]  J. Levine.  Species diversity and biological invasions: relating local process to community pattern. , 2000, Science.

[51]  D. Tilman,et al.  Plant diversity and ecosystem productivity: theoretical considerations. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[52]  M. Dethier.  The distribution and reproductive phenology of intertidal fleshy crustose algae in Washington , 1987 .

[53]  Lewi Stone,et al.  Ecosystem Resilience, Stability, and Productivity: Seeking a Relationship , 1996, The American Naturalist.

[54]  T. Farrell.  MODELS AND MECHANISMS OF SUCCESSION: AN EXAMPLE FROM A ROCKY INTERTIDAL COMMUNITY' , 1991 .

[55]  Peter J. Morin,et al.  Environmental warming alters food-web structure and ecosystem function , 1999, Nature.

[56]  M. Loreau,et al.  A new look at the relationship between diversity and stability. , 2002 .

[57]  D. Doak,et al.  The Statistical Inevitability of Stability‐Diversity Relationships in Community Ecology , 1998, The American Naturalist.

[58]  J. Lubchenco,et al.  Heteromorphic Life Histories of Certain Marine Algae as Adaptations to Variations in Herbivory , 1980 .

[59]  D. Tilman,et al.  Productivity and sustainability influenced by biodiversity in grassland ecosystems , 1996, Nature.

[60]  B. Menge,et al.  Algal recruitment and the maintenance of a plant mosaic in the low intertidal region on the Oregon coast , 1993 .