Intra- and interspecific variability of specific leaf area mitigate the reduction of community stability in response to warming and nitrogen addition

Global environmental changes are reducing the diversity and affecting the functioning of natural ecosystems as well as their ability to reliably provide ecosystem functions and services to mankind. Many studies have shown that a greater plant diversity can stabilize community productivity against environmental fluctuations. However, most of these studies focused on plant species richness, thus overlooking the potential role of functional traits in stabilizing community productivity against environmental fluctuations. Whether and how functional trait mean and variability influence community stability in response to environmental changes and their relative contributions to community stability are largely unknown. Here, we used a 10-year experiment to investigate the role of species richness, as well as functional mean and intra- and interspecific variability of specific leaf area (SLA) of plants within- and among communities in driving community stability in response to nitrogen (N) addit...