Community performance curves predict community stability despite interaction effects

Predicting the stability of ecological communities in changing environments is challenging. Classical theory posits that community stability cannot be understood without considering interspecific interactions. A contrasting view is that species' environmental responses and their variation (response diversity) influence stability to the extent that effects of interspecific interactions can be ignored. Surprisingly, few studies have evaluated the relative importance of interactions versus species' responses. Moreover, trait-based measures of response diversity often show limited predictability. Here, we introduce community performance curves, the aggregate of species' performance curves, as a powerful mechanistic link between community composition and stability. This approach reveals that species responses predict most of the variation in community stability in simulated communities, even when the strength of interspecific interactions varies. An experiment with ciliate communities corroborates these findings, while a literature review reveals how rarely both mechanisms are assessed jointly. By moving from summary traits to community performance curves, we reconcile the two perspectives: while species interactions undeniably shape community dynamics, community performance curves are sufficient to predict stability. This provides the opportunity to predict community stability, even when information about the multitude and diversity of interspecific interactions is unavailable.