Ecosystem stability and its relationship with biodiversity
Zhouyuan Li, Xiao-Zhou YE, Shao-Peng WANG
Abstract
The stability of ecosystems determines whether they can sustainably provide key functions and services in the background of global changes. Ecosystem stability, particularly its relation with biodiversity, is one of the central issues in ecology. Whether biodiversity enhances or impairs ecosystem stability has historically aroused much debate. Based on early reviews and studies on different aspects of stability, here we summarized recent advances from three aspects. Firstly, several recent theoretical studies offered novel insights in understanding the multidimensionality of stability and the intrinsic link between different stability measures, and we provided an overview on these new insights. Secondly, we reviewed recent empirical and theoretical studies on biodiversitystability relationships, including those in the context of multidimensional stability. Thirdly, we introduced the recently developed multi-scale stability framework, which provides new opportunity to understand the scaling of stability and extend diversity-stability relations to a multi-scale context. We ended with a discussion on future research questions and directions.