Most cited article - PubMed ID 26881747
Evaluating Functional Diversity: Missing Trait Data and the Importance of Species Abundance Structure and Data Transformation
Understanding how land use affects temporal stability is crucial to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, the mechanistic links between land-use intensity and stability-driving mechanisms remain unclear, with functional traits likely playing a key role. Using 13 years of data from 300 sites in Germany, we tested whether and how trait-based community features mediate the effect of land-use intensity on acknowledged stability drivers (compensatory dynamics, portfolio effect, and dominant species variability), within and across plant and arthropod communities. Trait-based plant features, especially the prevalence of acquisitive strategies along the leaf-economics spectrum, were the main land-use intensity mediators within and across taxonomic and trophic levels, consistently influencing dominant species variability. Functional diversity also mediated land-use intensity effects but played a lesser role. Our analysis discloses trait-based community features as key mediators of land-use effects on stability drivers, emphasizing the need to consider multi-trophic functional interactions to better understand complex ecosystem dynamics.
- MeSH
- Biodiversity * MeSH
- Arthropods physiology MeSH
- Ecosystem * MeSH
- Food Chain MeSH
- Plants MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Geographicals
- Germany MeSH
Despite its negative impacts on the environment and biodiversity, tree plantations can contribute to biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes, as they harbor many native species. In this study, we investigated the impact of Eucalyptus plantations on the taxonomic and functional diversity of ant communities, comparing ant communities sampled in managed and unmanaged (abandoned for 28 years) Eucalyptus plantations, and native Atlantic rain forests. Eucalyptus plantations, both managed and unmanaged, reduced the functional diversity and increased the similarity between ant communities leading to functional homogenization. While communities in managed plantations had the lowest values of both taxonomic and functional ant diversities, ant communities from unmanaged plantations had similar values of species richness, functional redundancy and Rao's Q compared to ant communities from forest patches (although functional richness was lower). In addition, communities in unmanaged Eucalyptus plantations were taxonomically and functionally more similar to communities located in managed plantations, indicating that Eucalyptus plantations have a severe long-term impact on ant communities. These results indicate that natural regeneration may mitigate the impact of Eucalyptus management, particularly regarding the functional structure of the community (α diversity), although it does not attenuate the effects of long term homogenization in community composition (β diversity).
- MeSH
- Biodiversity * MeSH
- Biological Variation, Population * MeSH
- Rainforest MeSH
- Eucalyptus parasitology MeSH
- Ants classification physiology MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
1. The environmental filtering hypothesis predicts that the abiotic environment selects species with similar trait values within communities. Testing this hypothesis along multiple - and interacting - gradients of climate and soil variables constitutes a great opportunity to better understand and predict the responses of plant communities to ongoing environmental changes. 2. Based on two key plant traits, maximum plant height and specific leaf area (SLA), we assessed the filtering effects of climate (mean annual temperature and precipitation, precipitation seasonality), soil characteristics (soil pH, sand content and total phosphorus) and all potential interactions on the functional structure and diversity of 124 dryland communities spread over the globe. The functional structure and diversity of dryland communities were quantified using the mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of plant trait distributions. 3. The models accurately explained the observed variations in functional trait diversity across the 124 communities studied. All models included interactions among factors, i.e. climate - climate (9% of explanatory power), climate - soil (24% of explanatory power) and soil - soil interactions (5% of explanatory power). Precipitation seasonality was the main driver of maximum plant height, and interacted with mean annual temperature and precipitation. Soil pH mediated the filtering effects of climate and sand content on SLA. Our results also revealed that communities characterized by a low variance can also exhibit low kurtosis values, indicating that functionally contrasting species can co-occur even in communities with narrow ranges of trait values. 4. Synthesis We identified the particular set of conditions under which the environmental filtering hypothesis operates in drylands worldwide. Our findings also indicate that species with functionally contrasting strategies can still co-occur locally, even under prevailing environmental filtering. Interactions between sources of environmental stress should be therefore included in global trait-based studies, as this will help to further anticipate where the effects of environmental filtering will impact plant trait diversity under climate change.
Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been a core ecological research topic over the last decades. Although a key hypothesis is that the diversity of functional traits determines ecosystem functioning, we do not know how much trait diversity is needed to maintain multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously (multifunctionality). Here, we uncovered a scaling relationship between the abundance distribution of two key plant functional traits (specific leaf area, maximum plant height) and multifunctionality in 124 dryland plant communities spread over all continents except Antarctica. For each trait, we found a strong empirical relationship between the skewness and the kurtosis of the trait distributions that cannot be explained by chance. This relationship predicted a strikingly high trait diversity within dryland plant communities, which was associated with a local maximization of multifunctionality. Skewness and kurtosis had a much stronger impact on multifunctionality than other important multifunctionality drivers such as species richness and aridity. The scaling relationship identified here quantifies how much trait diversity is required to maximize multifunctionality locally. Trait distributions can be used to predict the functional consequences of biodiversity loss in terrestrial ecosystems.
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
