Data from: Consistently positive effect of species diversity on ecosystem, but not population, temporal stability

Despite much recent progress, our understanding of diversity-stability
relationships across different study systems remains incomplete. In
particular, recent theory clarified that within-species population
stability and among-species asynchronous population dynamics combine to
determine ecosystem temporal stability, but their relative importance in
modulating diversity-ecosystem temporal stability relationships in
different ecosystems remains unclear. We addressed this issue with a
meta-analysis of empirical studies of ecosystem and population temporal
stability in relation to species diversity across a range of taxa and
ecosystems. We show that ecosystem temporal stability tended to increase
with species diversity, regardless of study systems. Increasing diversity
promoted asynchrony, which, in turn, contributed to increased ecosystem
stability. The positive diversity-ecosystem stability relationship
persisted even after accounting for the influences of environmental
covariates (e.g., precipitation, nutrient input). By contrast, species
diversity tended to reduce population temporal stability in terrestrial
systems, but increase population temporal stability in aquatic systems,
suggesting that asynchronous dynamics among species are essential for
stabilizing diverse terrestrial ecosystems. We conclude that there is
compelling empirical evidence for a general positive relationship between
species diversity and ecosystem-level temporal stability, but the
contrasting diversity-population temporal stability relationships between
terrestrial and aquatic systems call for more investigations into their
underlying mechanisms.