Stability and Diversity of Ecosystems

Understanding the relationship between diversity and stability requires a knowledge of how species interact with each other and how each is affected by the environment. The relationship is also complex, because the concept of stability is multifaceted; different types of stability describing different properties of ecosystems lead to multiple diversity-stability relationships. A growing number of empirical studies demonstrate positive diversity-stability relationships. These studies, however, have emphasized only a few types of stability, and they rarely uncover the mechanisms responsible for stability. Because anthropogenic changes often affect stability and diversity simultaneously, diversity-stability…