Evolution increases ecosystem temporal stability and recovery from a flood in grassland communities

摘要: Understanding factors that increase ecosystem stability is critical in the face of environmental change. Biodiversity plays a key role buffering ecosystems against disturbances such as extreme climatic events. The evolution biological communities within their local environment may also and resilience, but this has yet to be tested. Here, we provide evidence for evolutionary effects using long-term grassland biodiversity experiment. Communities plants with history co-occurrence (co-selected communities) were temporally more stable at low diversity than same no (naive communities). Furthermore, co-selected exhibited greater recovery following major flood, resulting post-flood productivity. These results demonstrate community can under normal circumstances response disturbance, suggest high part compensate naivety.