DOI: 10.5061/dryad.69p8cz9fp
title: Warming enhances the negative impact of shrubs on community stability via reducing species asynchrony

description: Numerous studies have demonstrated that climate warming and the presence
 of shrubs affect herbaceous plant community composition and function.
 However, how the temporal stability of herbaceous plant community biomass
 responds to combinations of warming and the presence of shrubs remains
 largely unexplored. The effects and mechanisms of simulated warming and
 shrubs on the community stability were investigated in a 5-year field
 experiment in alpine grasslands. Our results showed that warming alone or
 shrubs alone reduced community stability by decreasing species richness
 and temporal asynchrony. Additionally, warming alone or shrubs alone
 reduced community stability by decreasing community-weighted means of leaf
 dry matter content of species. We also found that the interaction of
 warming and shrubs had a cumulative negative effect on plant community
 stability by increasing species synchrony. Synthesis: Our study suggests
 that continued global warming and shrub expansion may negatively affect
 the stability of natural grassland functions and services, and highlights
 the importance of temporal asynchrony and traits among species in
 moderating the effects of global change on ecosystem stability.
description: # Warming enhances the negative impact of shrubs on community stability
 via reducing species asynchrony Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.69p8cz9fp](10.5061/dryad.69p8cz9fp) ## Description of the
 data and file structure Harvests were sorted by species, dried at 65°C for
 72 hours, and then weighed for dry biomass. We describe biodiversity in
 terms of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity. However, we
 did not predetermine which indicators were important; we analyzed them
 based on their correlation with community stability.  Community weighted
 mean trait values (CWM) are based on plant height (CWMH), leaf area (CWM
 LA), specific leaf area (CWM SLA), and leaf dry matter content (CWM LDMC).
 Functional diversity was based on functional richness (FRic), functional
 evenness (FEve), functional divergence (FDiv), and functional dispersion
 (FDis), and phylogenetic diversity was determined based on mean nearest
 taxon distance (MNTD). ### Files and variables #### File: DATA.xlsx
 **Description:**  ##### Variables sh: shrubs (P: shrubs present and R:
 shrubs removed) wa: warming (N: no warming (ambient temperature) and W:
 warming) C: Community stability (dimensionless) Y: species asynchrony
 (dimensionless)     pr: species richness (dimensionless) Community
 weighted mean trait values (CWM) are based on plant height (CWMH), leaf
 area (CWM LA), specific leaf area (CWM SLA), and leaf dry matter content
 (CWM LDMC). CWM:Community weighted mean trait values (dimensionless) H:
 plant height（cm） LA: leaf area（cm2） SLA: specific leaf area（cm2/g） LDMC:
 leaf dry matter content (g/g) FRic：functional richness (dimensionless)
 FEve：functional evenness (dimensionless) FDiv： functional divergence
 (dimensionless) FDis：functional dispersion (dimensionless) MNTD：mean
 nearest taxon distance (dimensionless) ## Code/software Statistical
 analysis was performed in R (version 4.0.5, R Development Core Team). All
 linear mixed-effects models were built using the lmer function from the
 ‘lme4’ package and the ‘piecewiseSEM’ package for constructing SEMs
 (Lefcheck, 2016). The figures were plotted using the ‘ggplot2’ package.