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  • Review Article
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The diversity–stability debate

Nature volume 405, pages 228–233 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

There exists little doubt that the Earth's biodiversity is declining. The Nature Conservancy, for example, has documented that one-third of the plant and animal species in the United States are now at risk of extinction. The problem is a monumental one, and forces us to consider in depth how we expect ecosystems, which ultimately are our life-support systems, to respond to reductions in diversity. This issue — commonly referred to as the diversity–stability debate — is the subject of this review, which synthesizes historical ideas with recent advances. Both theory and empirical evidence agree that we should expect declines in diversity to accelerate the simplification of ecological communities.

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Figure 1: The Ecotron experiment creates model multitrophic community assemblages containing plants, herbivores, parasitoids and decomposers in 16 different chambers.
Figure 2: Consumer–resource interactions.

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Acknowledgements

This paper benefited from comments by D. Raffaelli. I also thank J. Rasmussen and P. Yodzis for conversations on this issue, and D. Kramer for providing a single comment that led me to a different viewpoint.

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  1. Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Docteur Penfield Avenue, Montreal, H3A 1B1, Quebec, Canada

    Kevin Shear McCann

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McCann, K. The diversity–stability debate. Nature 405, 228–233 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35012234

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