Biodiversity increases the productivity and stability of phytoplankton communities.

ABSTRACT: Global biodiversity losses provide an immediate impetus to elucidate the relationships between biodiversity, productivity and stability. In this study, we quantified the effects of species richness and species combination on the productivity and stability of phytoplankton communities subject to predation by a single rotifer species. We also tested one mechanism of the insurance hypothesis: whether large, slow-growing, potentially-defended cells would compensate for the loss of small, fast-growing, poorly-defended cells after predation. There were significant effects of species richness and species combination on the productivity, relative yield, and stability of phytoplankton cultures, but the relative importance of species richness and combination varied with the response variables. Speci

SUBMITTER: Corcoran AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3500281 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature