RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 High dimensionality of the stability of a marine benthic ecosystem
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.10.21.349035
DO 10.1101/2020.10.21.349035
A1 Nelson Valdivia
A1 Moisés A. Aguilera
A1 Bernardo R. Broitman
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/22/2020.10.21.349035.abstract
AB Stability is a central property of complex systems and encompasses multiple dimensions such as resistance, resilience, recovery, and invariability. How these dimensions correlate among them is focus of recent ecological research; yet, empirical evidence at regional scales, at which conservation decisions are usually made, remains absent. Using a field-based manipulative experiment conducted in two marine intertidal regions, we analyse the correlations among different aspects of stability in functioning (community cover) and composition of local communities facing a press disturbance. The experiment involved the removal of the local space-dominant species for 35 months in eight sites under different environmental regimes in northern- and southern-central Chile (ca. 30ºS and 40ºS, respectively). After the disturbance, the magnitude of the initial responses and the recovery patterns were similar among communities dominated by different species, but varied between the functional and compositional response variables, and among four dimensions of stability. The recovery trajectories in function and composition remained mostly uncorrelated across the system. Yet, larger initial functional responses were associated with faster recovery trajectories—high functional resilience, in turn, was associated with both, high and low variability in the pattern of recovery. Finally, the compositional stability dimensions were independent from each other. The results suggest that varying community compositions can perform similar levels of functioning, which might be the result of strong compensatory dynamics among species competing for space in these communities. Knowledge of several, and sometimes orthogonal, aspects of stability is mandatory to fully describe the stability of complex ecological systems.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.