# Species Interactions Determine the Importance of Response Diversity for Community Stability to Pulse Disturbances

## TL;DR

The study shows that community stability after sudden disturbances depends on species interactions and their resistance or recovery abilities, not just diversity of responses.

## Contribution

The paper reveals that pulse disturbance stability is driven by species mean response and resistance, not response diversity, when interactions are present.

## Key findings

- Community stability under pulse disturbances is determined by species mean response, not response diversity.
- Response diversity stabilizes communities only when interspecific interactions are absent.
- Strong resistance or rapid recovery in species leads to higher stability after pulse disturbances.

## Abstract

Communities can buffer environmental change through diverse responses of their species, often leading to greater stability than expected from individual species. Metrics such as response dissimilarity (variation in magnitude) and divergence (variation in direction) capture this response diversity in fluctuating environments. We test whether response diversity also stabilises community properties under pulse disturbance. Combining model simulations of multi‐species communities with empirical data from a meta‐analysis, we find that community stability was consistently determined by the species mean response, regardless of interaction strength. Contrastingly, response dissimilarity and divergence were only related to stability in the absence of interspecific interactions. While response diversity increases stability under fluctuating conditions, pulse disturbances cause negative responses in most species and stability is highest when species uniformly exhibit strong resistance or fast recovery. These results highlight that the role of response diversity in promoting community stability depends on disturbance regimes and is shaped by species interactions.

Caculations of response diversity can be based on species fundamental responses in isolation or their realised responses in the community using metrics of response dissimilarity and response divergence. Combining model simulations and a meta‐analysis, we show here that community stability in the context of pulse disturbance is primarily determined by the mean species response based on both realised and fundamental species responses, with response diversity contributing in the absence of interspecific interactions. In contrast to fluctuating environments, stability under pulse disturbances depends on species with strong resistance or rapid recovery, highlighting that both disturbance regime and species interactions shape stability outcomes.