It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16-32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.

Bren School of Environmental Science and Management University of California Santa Barbara California 93106 USA

Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling Experimental Ecology Station Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Moulis 09200 France

Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences Smyth Hall 0404 Virginia Tech Blacksburg Virginia 24061 USA

Department of Agronomy Iowa State University Ames Iowa 50011 USA

Department of Biogeography BayCEER University of Bayreuth 95440 Bayreuth Germany

Department of Biosciences Swansea University Singleton Park Swansea SA28PP UK

Department of Botany Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia Branišovská 31 37005 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Management School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan Technische Universität München 85354 Freising Germany

Department of Ecology Evolution and Behavior University of Minnesota Twin Cities Saint Paul Minnesota 55108 USA

Department of Ecology Evolution and Environmental Biology Columbia University New York New York 10027 USA

Department of Ecology Evolution and Organismal Biology Iowa State University Ames Iowa 50011 USA

Department of Forest Resources University of Minnesota Twin Cities Saint Paul Minnesota 55108 USA

Department of Plant Sciences University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3RB UK

Department of Terrestrial Ecology Netherlands Institute of Ecology PO Box 50 6700 AB Wageningen The Netherlands

Disturbance Ecology BayCEER University of Bayreuth 95440 Bayreuth Germany

Ecological and Environmental Modelling Group School of Mathematics and Statistics University College Dublin Dublin 4 Ireland

Ecology and Biodiversity Group Department of Biology Utrecht University Padualaan 8 3584 CH Utrecht The Netherlands

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle Jena Leipzig Deutscher Platz 5e 04103 Leipzig Germany

Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and Department of Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado 80523 USA

Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences Yokohama National University 79 7 Tokiwadai Hodogaya Yokohama Kanagawa 240 8501 Japan

Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment University of Western Sydney Penrith New South Wales 2753 Australia

Institute for Plant Sciences University of Bern CH 3013 Bern Switzerland

Institute of Biology Leipzig University Johannisallee 21 04103 Leipzig Germany

Institute of Biology Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg 06108 Halle Germany

Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald D 17487 Greifswald Germany

Institute of Ecology Friedrich Schiller University Jena Dornburger Strasse 159 07743 Jena Germany

Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zurich 8057 Zurich Switzerland

Laboratory of Nematology Wageningen University and Research Centre PO Box 8123 6700 ES Wageningen The Netherlands

Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group Wageningen University PO Box 47 6700 AA Wageningen The Netherlands

UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Community Ecology 06120 Halle Germany

US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory Temple Texas 76502 USA

USDA FS Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center RTP North Carolina 27709 USA

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