Meta-analysis on pulse disturbances reveals differences in functional and compositional recovery across ecosystems

Most ecosystems are affected by anthropogenic or natural pulse disturbances, which alter the community composition and functioning for a limited period of time. Whether and how quickly communities recover from such pulses is central to our understanding of biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem organization, but also to nature conservation and management. Here, we present a meta-analysis of 508 (semi-)natural field experiments globally distributed across marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. We found recovery to be significant yet incomplete. At the end of the experiments, disturbed treatments resembled controls again when considering abundance (94%), biomass (82%), and univariate diversity measures (88%). Most disturbed treatments did not further depart from control after the pulse, indicating that few studies showed novel trajectories induced by the pulse. Only multivariate community composition on average showed little recovery: disturbed species composition remained dissimilar...绝大多数生态系统均会受到人为或自然脉冲干扰（pulse disturbance）的影响，这类干扰会在有限时段内改变群落组成与生态系统功能。群落能否从这类脉冲干扰中恢复，以及恢复的快慢，不仅是理解生物多样性动态与生态系统组织方式的核心议题，同时也与自然保护和生态管理息息相关。本研究针对全球分布于海洋、陆地与淡水生态系统的508项（半）自然野外实验开展了元分析（meta-analysis）。研究结果显示，群落恢复现象显著但并不完全。在实验结束时，当考量种群丰度（94%）、生物量（82%）以及单变量多样性指标（88%）时，干扰组群落与对照组已再度趋近一致。多数干扰组在脉冲干扰发生后并未进一步偏离对照组，这表明仅有少量研究观测到由脉冲干扰引发的全新群落动态轨迹。仅多变量群落组成的平均恢复程度极低：受干扰后的物种组成仍与对照组存在显著差异……