Tadeu Siqueira, Charles Hawkins, Julian Olden, Jonathan Tonkin, Lise Comte, Victor S. Saito, Thomas L. Anderson, Gedimar P. Barbosa, Núria Bonada, Claudia C. Bonecker

The temporal variability of ecological properties tends to decrease with spatial scale and levels of biological organization, but how does it propagate across trophic levels? We compiled metacommunity time-series datasets spanning basal resources to top predators from 355 freshwater sites across three continents. Temporal variability in abundance decreased from producers to tertiary consumers mainly at the local scale. Population synchrony within sites increased with trophic level, whereas spatial synchrony among communities decreased. While climate and diversity controlled temporal variability similarly across trophic levels, the relationship between metacommunity variability and spatial synchrony was stronger for top consumers. Our results suggest that mobile predators can stabilize metacommunities by buffering variability originating at the base of food webs. This finding demonstrates that the trophic structure of metacommunities, which integrates variation in organismal body size, dispersal, and environmental tolerance, should be considered when investigating ecological stability.