Data-Biodiversity and ecosystem stability

Emerging evidence emphasizes the crucial role of biodiversity in stabilizing ecosystem functioning, yet whether the stabilizing effect of biodiversity depends on the timescale of the study and the measure of biodiversity remain largely unclear. Here, we combined a regional-scale vegetation survey of the Tibetan alpine grasslands and a global-scale plant diversity database and investigated the impacts of biodiversity on ecosystem productivity stability assessed by satellite data across various time scales. We identified a similar temporal pattern at both regional and global scales: the stabilizing effect of plant diversity on productivity strengthened over time, reaching a near-saturation threshold around the timescale of 13 years. As the timescale increases, phylogenetic diversity emerged as a key predictor of ecosystem stability, surpassing taxonomic and functional diversity. In contrast, specific plant functional traits, such as community height, primarily influenced short-term ecosystem stability. Our findings underscore the temporal scale dependence of the biodiversity-ecosystem stability relationship at regional and global scales, as well as the critical role of phylogenetic diversity in preserving ecosystem stability.