Data from: Counteracting cascades challenge the heterogeneity – stability relationship
Data files
Jul 14, 2025 version files 470.74 KB
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Community_data.csv
90.62 KB
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Metadata.xlsx
11.25 KB
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Raw_community_tax.csv
346.90 KB
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README.md
1.77 KB
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ShoreHeight.csv
2.33 KB
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Stability_metrics.csv
17.88 KB
Abstract
Spatial environmental heterogeneity is widely assumed to enhance ecological stability by promoting refugia, biodiversity, and asynchrony. Yet, we lack field experiments testing this fundamental relationship and its underlying mechanisms in naturally assembled multitrophic systems. To address this gap, we monitored experimental substrates replicating topographic heterogeneity on a rocky shore over three years. Contrary to theory, heterogeneity showed no net effect on community stability due to four counteracting pathways. Heterogeneity increased stability by i) providing refugia that enhanced population stability and ii) boosting species richness, which promoted asynchrony. At the same time, it decreased stability by iii) reducing a dominant non-native species and iv) suppressing consumers, both of which otherwise stabilised community composition. These opposing processes cancelled out the heterogeneity-stability relationship, highlighting the complex and multi-causal nature of this relationship. We caution against the assumption that increasing heterogeneity universally enhances stability, particularly in systems with strong consumer interactions and dominant species.
This repository provides the data used in the study:
Sola, J., Fairchild, T.P., Perkins, M.J., Bull, J.C., & Griffin, J.N. (2025). Counteracting cascades challenge the heterogeneity–stability relationship. Ecology Letters. Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhhg
The study is based on a three-year field experiment on a temperate rocky shore, testing the widely held ecological assumption that spatial heterogeneity promotes community temporal stability. Contrary to theoretical expectations, we found that heterogeneity had no net stabilising effect, due to opposing cascades involving species richness, population variability, and suppression of dominant species. This repository enables full reproducibility of all analyses, figures, and models presented in the paper.
Repository Contents
The following files are included:
- Raw_community_tax.csv: Species-level percent cover data by tile and sampling date.
- Community_data.csv: Processed dataset containing diversity metrics.
- ShoreHeight.csv: Shore height measurements per experimental plot.
- Stability_metrics.csv: Final dataset derived from the above, containing all calculated temporal stability metrics.
- Metadata.xlsx: Description of all variables included in the datasets above, including units and data types.
Citation
If using these data, you are encouraged to cite both the publication and the Dryad dataset DOI.
Other sources for these data:
The datasets used in the analyses are also available at the companion GitHub repository: https://github.com/JSolaC/Solaetal2025-Stability