Ecosystem stability is determined by plant defense functional traits and population stability under mowing in a semi-arid temperate steppe

As a common grassland management practice in many high-latitude regions worldwide, mowing has great impacts on grassland functioning and stability. Species richness, species asynchrony and species stability have been suggested as central in responses to environmental change. Mowing can evoke plant defense systems due to physical damages to plants. However, no studies have comprehensively evaluated the role of plant defense functional traits, species richness, species asynchrony and stability in ecosystem functioning under mowing regimes across time-scales.

In the present study, we set up short-term (4-years) and long-term (16-years) mowing experiments with three stubble heights (control, 10 cm, 2 cm) in a temperate steppe of Inner Mongolia. We investigated the effects of mowing-induced changes in distribution metrics associated with plant defense traits, i.e. mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of trait distribution, on ecosystem stability of grassland communities using structural ..., ,