Counteracting cascades challenge the heterogeneity – stability relationship

Spatial environmental heterogeneity is widely assumed to enhance ecological stability by promoting refugia, biodiversity, and asynchrony. Yet, we lack field experiments testing this fundamental relationship and its underlying mechanisms in naturally assembled multitrophic systems. To address this gap, we monitored experimental substrates replicating topographic heterogeneity on a rocky shore over three years. Contrary to theory, heterogeneity showed no net effect on community stability due to four counteracting pathways. Heterogeneity increased stability by i) providing refugia that enhanced population stability and ii) boosting species richness, which promoted asynchrony. At the same time, it decreased stability by iii) reducing a dominant non-native species and iv) suppressing consumers, both of which otherwise stabilised community composition. These opposing processes cancelled out the heterogeneity-stability relationship, highlighting the complex and multi-causal nature of this rela..., , # Data from: Counteracting Cascades Challenge the Heterogeneity–Stability Relationship

This repository provides the data used in the study:

**Sola, J., Fairchild, T.P., Perkins, M.J., Bull, J.C., & Griffin, J.N. (2025).** *Counteracting cascades challenge the heterogeneity–stability relationship.* *Ecology Letters*. Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhhg](10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhhg)

The study is based on a three-year field experiment on a temperate rocky shore, testing the widely held ecological assumption that spatial heterogeneity promotes community temporal stability. Contrary to theoretical expectations, we found that heterogeneity had no net stabilising effect, due to opposing cascades involving species richness, population variability, and suppression of dominant species. This repository enables full reproducibility of all analyses, figures, and models presented in the paper.

### Repository Contents

The following files are included:

* **Raw_community_tax.csv**: Species-level per...,