Composition of ‘fast–slow’ traits drives avian community stability over North America

Abstract

Rapid biodiversity loss has triggered decades of research on the relationships between biodiversity and community stability. Recent studies highlighted the importance of species traits for understanding biodiversity–stability relationships. The species with high growth rates (‘fast’ species) are expected to be less resistant to environmental stress but recover faster if disturbed; in contrast, the species with slow growth rates (‘slow’ species) can be more resistant but recover more slowly if disturbed. Such a ‘fast–slow’ trait continuum provides a new perspective for understanding community stability, but its validity has mainly been examined in plant communities. Here, we investigate how ‘fast–slow’ trait composition, together with species richness and environmental factors, regulate avian community stability at a continental scale. We used bird population records from the North American Breeding Bird Survey during 1988–2017 and defined avian community stability as the temporal invariability of total community biomass. We calculated species richness and the community–weighted mean (CWM) and functional diversity (FD) of four key life‐history traits, including body size, nestling period (i.e. period of egg incubation and young bird fledging), life span and clutch size (i.e. annual total number of eggs). Environmental factors included temperature, precipitation and leaf area index (LAI). Our analyses showed that avian community stability was mainly driven by the CWM of the ‘fast–slow’ trait. Communities dominated by ‘fast’ species (i.e. species with small body size, short nestling period and life span and large clutch size) were more stable than those dominated by ‘slow’ species (i.e. species with large body size, long nestling period and life span and small clutch size). Species richness and the FD of the ‘fast–slow’ trait explained much smaller proportions of variation in avian community stability. Temperature had direct positive effects on avian community stability, while precipitation and leaf area index affected community stability indirectly by influencing species richness and trait composition. Our study demonstrates that composition of ‘fast–slow’ traits is the major biotic driver of avian community stability over North America. Temperature is the most important abiotic factor, but its effect is weaker than that of the ‘fast–slow’ trait. An integrated framework combining ‘fast–slow’ trait composition and temperature is needed to understand the response of avian communities in a changing environment. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Intra‐ and interspecific variability of specific leaf area mitigate the reduction of community stability in response to warming and nitrogen addition

“…Such changes in community composition with N addition may have increased asynchrony among dominant species or between dominant species and other species to maintain community temporal stability. This result is in contrast to a recent study showing that avian communities dominated by ‘fast' species exhibited higher species asynchrony compared with those dominated by ‘slow' species (Li et al 2021). Additionally, Morin et al (2014) showed that community dominated by species with larger variability of shade tolerance led to lower species asynchrony in response to environmental fluctuations (but higher species asynchrony in response to competition between species).…”

“…The positive contribution of differences in mean values of SLA among communities on species stability suggests that communities dominated by fast species are more stable in populations. Our result is consistent with Li et al (2021) showing high recovery rate of fast species, but in contrast to Majeková et al (2014) showing that slow species responded less rapidly to environment changes thus larger species stability. Intraspecific variability of SLA among communities also showed a positive contribution to species stability.…”

“…Species turnover of SLA can impact community stability through a tradeoff between resource acquisition (fast) and conservation (slow) strategy (Reich 2014). Specifically, communities dominated by slow‐growing species with low SLA can be more resistant and thus more stable because they can tolerate low‐resource conditions and maintain high survival due to the resource conservation strategy (Majeková et al 2014, Craven et al 2018), or less stable because they recover slowly against environmental disturbance (Craven et al 2018, Li et al 2021). Species turnover of SLA can also impact community stability by altering species asynchrony or species stability.…”

Environmental factors indirectly reduce phytoplankton community stability via functional diversity

“…Recently, several studies have shown the significance of functional trait-based life history strategies in understanding the functional diversity-stability relationships (Craven et al, 2018;Li et al, 2021;Schnabel et al, 2021). It is generally accepted that "K-strategists" species with larger individuals and more conservative resource acquisition show greater resistance (ability to withstand perturbation) but less resilience (recovery from perturbation) to a disturbance (MacGillivray et al, 1995;Karlowsky et al, 2018).…”

“…In contrast, the impact of changes in environmental factors on biodiversity-stability relationships has received extensive attention from scholars (De Laender et al, 2016;Craven et al, 2018;Li et al, 2021;Schnabel et al, 2021). Phytoplankton community stability is not only affected by diversity but also directly affected by the environment (Hillebrand et al, 2018;Polazzo and Rico, 2021).…”