DATA: Response diversity increases functional but decreases compositional stability of grassland communities

Response diversity is assumed to underly ecosystem stability, but experimental evidence is lacking. We introduce a novel way to quantify response diversity based on performance-environment relationships. Using this approach, we show that response diversity increases the functional stability, but decreases the compositional stability and diversity of grassland ecosystems. We conclude that response diversity is an important component of biodiversity and discuss future research directions to refine and generalize the concept of response diversity and its role in ecosystem stability.