Functional traits mediate the effect of land use on drivers of community stability within and across trophic levels.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how land use affects temporal stability is crucial to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, the mechanistic links between land-use intensity and stability-driving mechanisms remain unclear, with functional traits likely playing a key role. Using 13 years of data from 300 sites in Germany, we tested whether and how trait-based community features mediate the effect of land-use intensity on acknowledged stability drivers (compensatory dynamics, portfolio effect, and dominant species variability), within and across plant and arthropod communities. Trait-based plant features, especially the prevalence of acquisitive strategies along the leaf-economics spectrum, were the main land-use intensity mediators within and across taxonomic and trophic levels, consistently inf

SUBMITTER: Sperandii MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11759044 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature