Stability patterns can vary across scales within ecological systems. Understanding cross‐scale stability patterns can be important for informing conservation and management in landscapes. To identify underlying drivers of stability at local (habitat) and regional (floodplain) scales, both compositional and aggregate variability in terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, and variability and synchrony between aquatic invertebrates and fish, were investigated in a dynamic floodplain landscape. Synchrony between local aquatic invertebrate communities was low, likely driven by local differences in flood disturbance. However, terrestrial invertebrates had high composition and biomass synchrony, consistent with more homogeneous terrestrial conditions (e.g. temperature). Fish biomass had lower variability than aquatic invertebrates, indicating mobile predators may benefit from spatially heterogeneous conditions. Preserving spatial environmental heterogeneity will therefore likely be important for maintaining landscape‐scale stability across multiple trophic levels in dynamic river environments.
Harris et al. (Sun,) studied this question.