Dominant species determine grazing effects on the stability of herbaceous community production at multiple scales in drylands

Sustainable provision of critical ecosystem services in drylands is reliant on their stability under anthropogenic disturbances. Livestock grazing and shrub encroachment are the primary drivers of disturbance that impact their biodiversity and production dynamics. However, the effects of grazing on the stability at multiple scales, particularly following the transition from grass-dominated to shrub-encroached drylands, is still largely unexplored.
Here, we conducted comparable sheep-grazing experiments in two types of drylands (grass-dominated vs. shrub-encroached grasslands) on the Mongolia Plateau to explore the effects of grazing and shrub encroachment on biodiversity and stability at multiple scales. We examined how grazing affected the temporal stability of aboveground biomass in herbaceous communities in both grass-dominated and shrub-encroached grasslands, through two potential mechanisms: insurance effects and changes in the population-level stability of individual species.
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