01871nas a2200229   4500008004100000245010000041210006900141300000900210490000700219520113100226653002301357653002101380653002101401653002901422653002101451653002201472100002201494700002201516700002401538700001701562856006201579       2017                        eng d00aSpecies reordering, not changes in richness, drives long-term dynamics in grassland communities0 aSpecies reordering not changes in richness drives longterm dynam  a15650 v203 a<p>Determining how ecological communities will respond to global environmental change remains a challenging research problem. Recent meta-analyses concluded that most communities are undergoing compositional change despite no net change in local species richness. We explored how species richness and composition of co-occurring plant, grasshopper, breeding bird and small mammal communities in arid and mesic grasslands changed in response to increasing aridity and fire frequency. In the arid system, grassland and shrubland plant and breeding bird communities were undergoing directional change, whereas grasshopper and small mammal communities were stable. In the mesic system, all communities were undergoing directional change regardless of fire frequency. Despite directional change in composition in some communities, species richness of all communities did not change because compositional change resulted more from reordering of species abundances than turnover in species composition. Thus, species reordering, not changes in richness, explains long-term dynamics in these grass and shrub dominated communities.</p>10aCommunity dynamics10adesert grassland10adesert shrubland10afire; species reordering10aSpecies richness10atallgrass prairie1 aJones, Sydney, K.1 aRipplinger, Julie1 aCollins, Scott., L.1 aCoulson, Tim  uhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.12864