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Abstract Disturbance and environmental change may cause communities to converge on a steady state, diverge towards multiple alternative states or remain in long‐term transience. Yet, empirical investigations of successional trajectories are rare, especially in systems experiencing multiple concurrent anthropogenic drivers of change. We examined succession in old field grassland communities subjected to disturbance and nitrogen fertilization using data from a long‐term (22‐year) experiment. Regardless of initial disturbance, after a decade communities converged on steady states largely determined by resource availability, where species turnover declined as communities approached dynamic equilibria. Species favoured by the disturbance were those that eventually came to dominate the highly fertilized plots. Furthermore, disturbance made successional pathways more direct revealing an important interaction effect between nutrients and disturbance as drivers of community change. Our results underscore the dynamical nature of grassland and old field succession, demonstrating how community properties such as diversity change through transient and equilibrium states.
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This content will become publicly available on April 2, 2026
Effects of Disturbance and Fertilisation on Plant Community Synchrony, Biodiversity and Stability Through Succession
ABSTRACT Global change drivers alter multiple components of community composition, with cascading impacts on ecosystem stability. However, it remains largely unknown how interactions among global change drivers will alter community synchrony, especially across successional timescales. We analysed a 22‐year time series of grassland community data from Cedar Creek, USA, to examine the joint effects of pulse soil disturbance and press nitrogen addition on community synchrony, richness, evenness and stability during transient and post‐transient periods of succession. Using multiple regression and structural equation modelling, we found that nitrogen addition and soil disturbance decreased both synchrony and stability, thereby weakening the negative synchrony–stability relationship. We found evidence of the portfolio effect during transience, but once communities settled on a restructured state post‐transience, diversity no longer influenced the synchrony–stability relationship. Differences between transient and post‐transient drivers of synchrony and stability underscore the need for long‐term data to inform ecosystem management under ongoing global change.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2033292
- PAR ID:
- 10581160
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology Letters
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1461-023X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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