Per capita interactions and stress tolerance drive stress-induced changes in biodiversity effects on ecosystem functions

Jan M. Baert (), Colin R. Janssen, Koen Sabbe and Frederik De Laender
Additional contact information
Jan M. Baert: Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology and Applied Ecology, Ghent University
Colin R. Janssen: Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology and Applied Ecology, Ghent University
Koen Sabbe: Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University
Frederik De Laender: Research Unit of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, University of Namur

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Environmental stress changes the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functions, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Because species interactions shape biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships, changes in per capita interactions under stress (as predicted by the stress gradient hypothesis) can be an important driver of stress-induced changes in these relationships. To test this hypothesis, we measure productivity in microalgae communities along a diversity and herbicide gradient. On the basis of additive partitioning and a mechanistic community model, we demonstrate that changes in per capita interactions do not explain effects of herbicide stress on the biodiversity–productivity relationship. Instead, assuming that the per capita interactions remain unaffected by stress, causing species densities to only change through differences in stress tolerance, suffices to predict the stress-induced changes in the biodiversity–productivity relationship and community composition. We discuss how our findings set the stage for developing theory on how environmental stress changes biodiversity effects on ecosystem functions.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12486 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12486

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12486

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().