RT Journal Article
T1 Directional trends in species composition over time can lead to a widespread overemphasis of year‐to‐year asynchrony
A1 Valencia Gómez, Enrique
A1 Bello, Francesco de
A1 Lepš, Jan
A1 Galland, Thomas
A1 E‐Vojtkó, Anna
A1 Conti, Luisa
A1 Danihelka, Jiří
A1 Dengler, Jürgen
A1 Eldridge, David
A1 Estiarte, Marc
A1 García‐González, Ricardo
A1 Garnier, Eric
A1 Gómez, Daniel
A1 Harrison, Susan
A1 Herben, Tomas
A1 Ibáñez, Ricardo
A1 Jentsch, Anke
A1 Juergens, Norbert
A1 Kertész, Miklós
A1 Klumpp, Katja
A1 Louault, Frédérique
A1 Marrs, Rob
A1 Ónodi, Gábor
A1 Pakeman, Robin
A1 Pärtel, Meelis
A1 Peco, Begoña
A1 Peñuelas, Josep
A1 Rueda, Marta
A1 Schmidt, Wolfgang
A1 Schmiedel, Ute
A1 Schuetz, Martin
A1 Skalova, Hana
A1 Šmilauer, Petr
A1 Šmilauerová, Marie
A1 Smit, Christian
A1 Song, Ming‐Hua
A1 Stock, Martin
A1 Val, James
A1 Vandvik, Vigdis
A1 Wesche, Karsten
A1 Woodcock, Ben
A1 Young, Truman
A1 Yu, Fei‐Hai
A1 Zobel, Martin
A1 Götzenberger, Lars
A2 Lauren Hallett, 
AB Compensatory dynamics are described as one of the main mechanisms that increase community stability, e.g., where decreases of some species on a year‐to‐year basis are offset by an increase in others. Deviations from perfect synchrony between species (asynchrony) have therefore been advocated as an important mechanism underlying biodiversity effects on stability. However, it is unclear to what extent existing measures of synchrony actually capture the signal of year‐to‐year species fluctuations in the presence of long‐term directional trends in both species abundance and composition (species directional trends hereafter). Such directional trends may lead to a misinterpretation of indices commonly used to reflect year‐to‐year synchrony.Methods: An approach based on three‐term local quadrat variance (T3) which assesses population variability in a three‐year moving window, was used to overcome species directional trend effects. This “detrending” approach was applied to common indices of synchrony across a worldwide collection of 77 temporal plant community datasets comprising almost 7,800 individual plots sampled for at least six years. Plots included were either maintained under constant “control” conditions over time or were subjected to different management or disturbance treatments.Results: Accounting for directional trends increased the detection of year‐to‐year synchronous patterns in all synchrony indices considered. Specifically, synchrony values increased significantly in ~40% of the datasets with the T3 detrending approach while in ~10% synchrony decreased. For the 38 studies with both control and manipulated conditions, the increase in synchrony values was stronger for longer time series, particularly following experimental manipulation.Conclusions: Species’ long‐term directional trends can affect synchrony and stability measures potentially masking the ecological mechanism causing year‐to‐year fluctuations. As such, previous studies on community stability might have overemphasised the role of compensatory dynamics in real‐world ecosystems, and particularly in manipulative conditions, when not considering the possible overriding effects of long‐term directional trends.
PB Wiley
SN 1100-9233
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/94897
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/94897
LA eng
NO Valencia, Enrique, et al. «Directional Trends in Species Composition over Time Can Lead to a Widespread Overemphasis of Year‐to‐year Asynchrony». Journal of Vegetation Science, editado por Lauren Hallett, vol. 31, n.o 5, septiembre de 2020, pp. 792-802.https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.12916.
NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWe thank multiple entities for the financial support necessary to obtain the different databases: the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant numbers DEB-8114302, DEB-8811884, DEB-9411972, DEB-0080382, DEB-0620652, DEB-1234162, DEB-9707477, DEB-0316402, DEB-08-16453, and DEB-12-56034, DEB-0618210, the Nutrient Network (http://www.nutnet.org) experiment from the National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (NSF-DEB-1042132), the New Zealand National Vegetation Survey Databank, the Spanish MINECO (Project CGL2014-53789-R), the Madrid Regional Government (Projects REMEDINAL-3 and REMEDINAL-TE), the European Research Council Synergy grant 610028 (IMBALANCE-P), the Institute on the Environment (DG-0001-13), the SOERE-ACBB financed through French National Agency for Research (ANAEE-F, ANR-11-INBS-0001), the Estonian Research Council (IUT 20-28, IUT 20-29), Czech Science Foundation (GAČR 17-05506S and 19-28491X), the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence EcolChange), the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) for a grant to the NABU Hamburg (management experiment Calamagrostis epigejos), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the framework of the project BIOTA Southern Africa (promotion numbers 01LC0024, 01LC0024A and 01LC0624A2), Task 159 of SASSCAL (promotion number 01LG1201) and the Scottish Government's Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services division. Acknowledgement Data owned by NERC© Database Right/Copyright NERC. Further support was provided by the Jornada Basin Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project, Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve and the University of Minnesota. We also thank the Lawes Agricultural Trust and Rothamsted Research for data from the e-RA database. The Rothamsted Long-term Experiments National Capability (LTE-NCG) is supported by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Grant BBS/E/C/000J0300) and the Lawes Agricultural Trust.
NO Estonian Research Council
NO Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutes
NO University of Minnesota
NO UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
NO Lawes Agricultural Trust (UK)
NO U.S. National Science Foundation
NO New Zealand National Vegetation Survey Databank
NO Comunidad de Madrid
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España)
NO European Commission
NO Agence Nationale de Recherche (France)
NO Czech Science Foundation
NO  Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt
NO Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (Deutschland)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 20 abr 2026