Understanding how land use affects temporal stability is crucial to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, the mechanistic links between land-use intensity and stability-driving mechanisms remain unclear, with functional traits likely playing a key role. Using 13 years of data from 300 sites in Germany, we tested whether and how trait-based community features mediate the effect of land-use intensity on acknowledged stability drivers (compensatory dynamics, portfolio effect, and dominant species variability), within and across plant and arthropod communities. Trait-based plant features, especially the prevalence of acquisitive strategies along the leaf-economics spectrum, were the main land-use intensity mediators within and across taxonomic and trophic levels, consistently influencing dominant species variability. Functional diversity also mediated land-use intensity effects but played a lesser role. Our analysis discloses trait-based community features as key mediators of land-use effects on stability drivers, emphasizing the need to consider multi-trophic functional interactions to better understand complex ecosystem dynamics.

• MeSH
• Biodiversity * MeSH
• Arthropods physiology   MeSH
• Ecosystem * MeSH
• Food Chain MeSH
• Plants MeSH
• Animals MeSH
• Check Tag
• Animals MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Geographicals
• Germany MeSH

Ecological theory posits that temporal stability patterns in plant populations are associated with differences in species' ecological strategies. However, empirical evidence is lacking about which traits, or trade-offs, underlie species stability, especially across different biomes. We compiled a worldwide collection of long-term permanent vegetation records (greater than 7000 plots from 78 datasets) from a large range of habitats which we combined with existing trait databases. We tested whether the observed inter-annual variability in species abundance (coefficient of variation) was related to multiple individual traits. We found that populations with greater leaf dry matter content and seed mass were more stable over time. Despite the variability explained by these traits being low, their effect was consistent across different datasets. Other traits played a significant, albeit weaker, role in species stability, and the inclusion of multi-variate axes or phylogeny did not substantially modify nor improve predictions. These results provide empirical evidence and highlight the relevance of specific ecological trade-offs, i.e. in different resource-use and dispersal strategies, for plant populations stability across multiple biomes. Further research is, however, necessary to integrate and evaluate the role of other specific traits, often not available in databases, and intraspecific trait variability in modulating species stability.

• Keywords
• acquisitive, conservative, dispersal, long-term studies, temporal patterns, variability,
• MeSH
• Ecosystem * MeSH
• Phenotype MeSH
• Phylogeny MeSH
• Plant Leaves MeSH
• Plants * MeSH
• Seeds MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
• Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. MeSH