Macrophyte species diversity and community stoichiometric homeostasis are correlated with different dimensions of stability following disturbance

Abstract

Understanding how biodiversity and community functional traits preserve lake ecosystem multidimensional stability under global environmental changes is crucial for sustaining the vital ecosystem services we depend on. Based on sediment nutrient gradient experiments and three‐year seasonal monitoring of macrophyte communities in Erhai Lake, southwest China, spanning pre‐ and post‐algal bloom periods, we explored how species diversity and a key community functional trait (stoichiometric homeostasis) affect multiple dimensions (temporal stability, resistance, resilience and recovery) and facets (function, composition, diversity and functional trait) of stability of macrophyte communities following algal blooms. Generally, we found that species diversity and stoichiometric homeostasis of phosphorus (HP) had positive relationships with functional and compositional temporal stability, resistance and recovery, indicating that ecosystems with high species diversity and community HP are more resistant and stable in response to external algal bloom disturbances. However, species diversity and community HP had no positive or even negative relationships with resilience, suggesting that high biodiversity with high‐HP species‐dominated ecosystems is not beneficial for the rapid recovery from disturbances, probably due to the slow growth and reproduction rate of high‐HP species. In addition, we found strong positive correlations between functional and compositional stability across the four dimensions of stability, while the stability of species diversity and the key functional trait (HP) exhibited complex relationships, implying the difficulty of optimizing multiple dimensions and facets of stability simultaneously. Synthesis. Our work demonstrated that macrophyte species diversity and community HP are critical in determining the multiple dimensions and facets of stability in response to disturbances, which provides new insights for predicting the responses of macrophyte‐dominated lake ecosystems to the current increasing frequency of algal blooms.