Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Climate Variability Has A Stabilizing Effect On The Coexistence Of Prairie Grasses, Peter B. Adler, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Phaedon C. Kyriakidis, Qingfeng Guan, Jonathan M. Levine

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

How expected increases in climate variability will affect species diversity depends on the role of such variability in regulating the coexistence of competing species. Despite theory linking temporal environmental fluctuations with the maintenance of diversity, the importance of climate variability for stabilizing coexistence remains unknown because of a lack of appropriate long-term observations. Here, we analyze three decades of demographic data from a Kansas prairie to demonstrate that interannual climate variability promotes the coexistence of three common grass species. Specifically, we show that (i) the dynamics of the three species satisfy all requirements of ‘‘storage effect’’ theory based on recruitment …