scholarly journals Biotic interactions, community assembly, and eco-evolutionary dynamics as drivers of long-term biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Eisenhauer ◽  
Michael Bonkowski ◽  
Ulrich Brose ◽  
Francois Buscot ◽  
Walter Durka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Research Unit ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Biodiversity Change ◽  
Diversity Effects ◽  
The Jena Experiment

The functioning and service provisioning of ecosystems in the face of anthropogenic environmental and biodiversity change is a cornerstone of ecological research. The last three decades of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) research have provided compelling evidence for the significant positive role of biodiversity in the functioning of many ecosystems. Despite broad consensus of this relationship, the underlying ecological and evolutionary mechanisms have not been well understood. This complicates the transition from a description of patterns to a predictive science. The proposed Research Unit aims at filling this gap of knowledge by applying novel experimental and analytical approaches in one of the longest-running biodiversity experiments in the world: the Jena Experiment. The central aim of the Research Unit is to uncover the mechanisms that determine BEF relationships in the short- and in the long-term. Increasing BEF relationships with time in long-term experiments do not only call for a paradigm shift in the appreciation of the relevance of biodiversity change, they likely are key to understanding the mechanisms of BEF relationships in general. The subprojects of the proposed Research Unit fall into two tightly linked main categories with two research areas each that aim at exploring variation in community assembly processes and resulting differences in biotic interactions as determinants of the long-term BEF relationship. Subprojects under “Microbial community assembly” and “Assembly and functions of animal communities” mostly focus on plant diversity effects on the assembly of communities and their feedback effects on biotic interactions and ecosystem functions. Subprojects under “Mediators of plant-biotic interactions” and “Intraspecific diversity and micro-evolutionary changes” mostly focus on plant diversity effects on plant trait expression and micro-evolutionary adaptation, and subsequent feedback effects on biotic interactions and ecosystem functions. This unification of evolutionary and ecosystem processes requires collaboration across the proposed subprojects in targeted plant and soil history experiments using cutting-edge technology and will produce significant synergies and novel mechanistic insights into BEF relationships. The Research Unit of the Jena Experiment is uniquely positioned in this context by taking an interdisciplinary and integrative approach to capture whole-ecosystem responses to changes in biodiversity and to advance a vibrant research field.

scholarly journals Plant traits are poor predictors of long-term ecosystem functioning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fons van der Plas ◽  
Thomas Schröder-Georgi ◽  
Alexandra Weigelt ◽  
Kathryn Barry ◽  
Sebastian Meyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Species ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Plant Traits ◽  
Vascular Plant ◽  
Plant Performance ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Average Percentage ◽  
Functional Consequences ◽  
Small Set

ABSTRACTEarth is home to over 350,000 vascular plant species1 that differ in their traits in innumerable ways. Yet, a handful of functional traits can help explaining major differences among species in photosynthetic rate, growth rate, reproductive output and other aspects of plant performance2–6. A key challenge, coined “the Holy Grail” in ecology, is to upscale this understanding in order to predict how natural or anthropogenically driven changes in the identity and diversity of co-occurring plant species drive the functioning of ecosystems7, 8. Here, we analyze the extent to which 42 different ecosystem functions can be predicted by 41 plant traits in 78 experimentally manipulated grassland plots over 10 years. Despite the unprecedented number of traits analyzed, the average percentage of variation in ecosystem functioning that they jointly explained was only moderate (32.6%) within individual years, and even much lower (12.7%) across years. Most other studies linking ecosystem functioning to plant traits analyzed no more than six traits, and when including either only six random or the six most frequently studied traits in our analysis, the average percentage of explained variation in across-year ecosystem functioning dropped to 4.8%. Furthermore, different ecosystem functions were driven by different traits, with on average only 12.2% overlap in significant predictors. Thus, we did not find evidence for the existence of a small set of key traits able to explain variation in multiple ecosystem functions across years. Our results therefore suggest that there are strong limits in the extent to which we can predict the long-term functional consequences of the ongoing, rapid changes in the composition and diversity of plant communities that humanity is currently facing.

scholarly journals Modeling How Community Assembly Alters the Functioning of Ecosystems

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Koffel ◽  
Colin T Kremer ◽  
K. Bannar-Martin ◽  
S.K. Morgan Ernest ◽  
Nico Eisenhauer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Environmental Heterogeneity ◽  
Nitrogen Fixing ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Equilibrium Behavior ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Species Productivity ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Jena Experiment

AbstractAlthough the effects of species richness on ecosystem functioning have been extensively studied, there is increased interest in understanding how community assembly in a more general sense can alter the functioning of ecosystems. We identify two complementary approaches for evaluating how community assembly influences biomass production. The first quantifies the relative importance of complementarity and selection by contrasting monocultures with polycultures. The second identifies the effects of species replacements (losses and/or gains of species relative to the baseline polyculture) as well as the indirect effects on other species’ productivity. We compare and contrast these two approaches using simulated communities where species compete for different resource types and experience different levels of environmental heterogeneity and find that these metrics can jointly diagnose the mechanisms of competition driving productivity. We apply our methods to data from a long-term biodiversity-ecosystem experiment (the Jena Experiment) and find that the data do not correspond to any of the competition scenarios we modeled. We address two additional possible complications: facilitation by nitrogen fixing plants, and non-equilibrium behavior during community assembly, and find that facilitation/competition by nitrogen fixing plants is the more likely explanation for the results obtained at Jena.

scholarly journals Tree diversity increases robustness of multi-trophic interactions

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1898) ◽  
pp. 20182399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Fornoff ◽  
Alexandra-Maria Klein ◽  
Nico Blüthgen ◽  
Michael Staab
Keyword(s):  
Trophic Interactions ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Tree Diversity ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Biodiversity Change ◽  
Ant Diversity ◽  
Diversity Effects

Multi-trophic interactions maintain critical ecosystem functions. Biodiversity is declining globally, while responses of trophic interactions to biodiversity change are largely unclear. Thus, studying responses of multi-trophic interaction robustness to biodiversity change is crucial for understanding ecosystem functioning and persistence. We investigate plant–Hemiptera (antagonism) and Hemiptera–ant (mutualism) interaction networks in response to experimental manipulation of tree diversity. We show increased diversity at both higher trophic levels (Hemiptera and ants) and increased robustness through redundancy of lower level species of multi-trophic interactions when tree diversity increased. Hemiptera and ant diversity increased with tree diversity through non-additive diversity effects. Network analyses identified that tree diversity also increased the number of tree and Hemiptera species used by Hemiptera and ant species, and decreased the specialization on lower trophic level species in both mutualistic and antagonist interactions. Our results demonstrate that bottom-up effects of tree diversity ascend through trophic levels regardless of interaction type. Thus, local tree diversity is a key driver of multi-trophic community diversity and interaction robustness in forests.

scholarly journals A remote sensing-based dataset to characterize the ecosystem functioning and functional diversity in the Biosphere Reserve of Sierra Nevada (SE Spain)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz P. Cazorla ◽  
Javier Cabello ◽  
Andrés Reyes ◽  
Emilio Guirado ◽  
Julio Peñas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Primary Production ◽  
Functional Diversity ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Functional Attributes

Abstract. Conservation Biology faces the challenge of safeguarding the ecosystem functions and ecological processes (water cycle, nutrients, energy flow, and community dynamics) that sustain the multiple facets of biodiversity. Characterization and evaluation of these processes and functions can be carried out through functional attributes or traits related to the exchanges of matter and energy between vegetation and the atmosphere. Based on this principle, satellite imagery can provide integrative spatiotemporal characterizations of ecosystem functions at local to global scales. Here, we provide a multi-temporal dataset at protected area level, that characterizes the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of ecosystem functioning in the Biosphere Reserve of Sierra Nevada (Spain), captured through the spectral vegetation index EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index, product MOD13Q1.006 from MODIS sensor) from 2001 to 2018. The database contains, at the annual scale, a synthetic map of Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs) classes from three Ecosystem Functional Attributes (EFAs): i) descriptors of annual primary production, ii) seasonality, and iii) phenology of carbon gains. It also includes two ecosystem functional diversity indices derived from the above datasets: i) EFT richness, and ii) EFT rarity. Finally, it provides inter-annual summaries for all previous variables, i.e., their long-term means and inter-annual variabilities. The datasets are available in two open-source sites (PANGAEA: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.924792 (Cazorla et al., 2020a) and http://obsnev.es/apps/efts_SN.html). This dataset brings to scientists, managers, and the general public, valuable information on the first characterization of ecosystem functional diversity based on primary production developed in Sierra Nevada, a biodiversity hotspot in the Mediterranean basin, and an exceptional natural laboratory for ecological research within the Long-Term Social-Ecological Research (LTSER) network.

scholarly journals Evidence for local‐scale community assembly processes from long‐term observations of biodiversity in a grassland chronosequence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. McKone ◽  
Evelyn W. Williams ◽  
Jared J. Beck
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Local Scale

scholarly journals Global urban signatures of phenotypic change in animal and plant populations

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (34) ◽  
pp. 8951-8956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Alberti ◽  
Cristian Correa ◽  
John M. Marzluff ◽  
Andrew P. Hendry ◽  
Eric P. Palkovacs ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Phenotypic Change ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Phenotypic Changes ◽  
Evolutionary Changes ◽  
Multiple Regions ◽  
Anthropogenic Systems

Humans challenge the phenotypic, genetic, and cultural makeup of species by affecting the fitness landscapes on which they evolve. Recent studies show that cities might play a major role in contemporary evolution by accelerating phenotypic changes in wildlife, including animals, plants, fungi, and other organisms. Many studies of ecoevolutionary change have focused on anthropogenic drivers, but none of these studies has specifically examined the role that urbanization plays in ecoevolution or explicitly examined its mechanisms. This paper presents evidence on the mechanisms linking urban development patterns to rapid evolutionary changes for species that play important functional roles in communities and ecosystems. Through a metaanalysis of experimental and observational studies reporting more than 1,600 phenotypic changes in species across multiple regions, we ask whether we can discriminate an urban signature of phenotypic change beyond the established natural baselines and other anthropogenic signals. We then assess the relative impact of five types of urban disturbances including habitat modifications, biotic interactions, habitat heterogeneity, novel disturbances, and social interactions. Our study shows a clear urban signal; rates of phenotypic change are greater in urbanizing systems compared with natural and nonurban anthropogenic systems. By explicitly linking urban development to traits that affect ecosystem function, we can map potential ecoevolutionary implications of emerging patterns of urban agglomerations and uncover insights for maintaining key ecosystem functions upon which the sustainability of human well-being depends.

scholarly journals Stochastic Assembly Leads to Alternative Communities with Distinct Functions in a Bioreactor Microbial Community

mBio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jizhong Zhou ◽  
Wenzong Liu ◽  
Ye Deng ◽  
Yi-Huei Jiang ◽  
Kai Xue ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Structure ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Diversity ◽  
Microbial Community Structure ◽  
Community Assembly ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Microbial Biodiversity ◽  
Stochastic Assembly

ABSTRACTThe processes and mechanisms of community assembly and its relationships to community functioning are central issues in ecology. Both deterministic and stochastic factors play important roles in shaping community composition and structure, but the connection between community assembly and ecosystem functioning remains elusive, especially in microbial communities. Here, we used microbial electrolysis cell reactors as a model system to examine the roles of stochastic assembly in determining microbial community structure and functions. Under identical environmental conditions with the same source community, ecological drift (i.e., initial stochastic colonization) and subsequent biotic interactions created dramatically different communities with little overlap among 14 identical reactors, indicating that stochastic assembly played dominant roles in determining microbial community structure. Neutral community modeling analysis revealed that deterministic factors also played significant roles in shaping microbial community structure in these reactors. Most importantly, the newly formed communities differed substantially in community functions (e.g., H2production), which showed strong linkages to community structure. This study is the first to demonstrate that stochastic assembly plays a dominant role in determining not only community structure but also ecosystem functions. Elucidating the links among community assembly, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning is critical to understanding ecosystem functioning, biodiversity preservation, and ecosystem management.IMPORTANCEMicroorganisms are the most diverse group of life known on earth. Although it is well documented that microbial natural biodiversity is extremely high, it is not clear why such high diversity is generated and maintained. Numerous studies have established the roles of niche-based deterministic factors (e.g., pH, temperature, and salt) in shaping microbial biodiversity, the importance of stochastic processes in generating microbial biodiversity is rarely appreciated. Moreover, while microorganisms mediate many ecosystem processes, the relationship between microbial diversity and ecosystem functioning remains largely elusive. Using a well-controlled laboratory system, this study provides empirical support for the dominant role of stochastic assembly in creating variations of microbial diversity and the first explicit evidence for the critical role of community assembly in influencing ecosystem functioning. The results presented in this study represent important contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms, especially stochastic processes, involved in shaping microbial biodiversity.

scholarly journals Long-term and interdisciplinary research on forest ecosystem functions: challenges at Takayama site since 1993

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Muraoka ◽  
Taku M. Saitoh ◽  
Shin Nagai
Keyword(s):  
Forest Ecosystem ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Ecosystem Functions

scholarly journals Measuring Sound at a Cold-Water Coral Reef to Assess the Impact of COVID-19 on Noise Pollution

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence H. De Clippele ◽  
Denise Risch
Keyword(s):  
Coral Reef ◽  
Coral Reefs ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Cold Water ◽  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Level Height ◽  
Water Coral

This study compares the noise levels at the cold-water coral Tisler reef, before and after the closure of the border between Norway and Sweden, which occurred as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tisler reef is a marine protected area located under a ferry “highway” that connects Norway and Sweden. Cold-water coral reefs are recognised as being important hotspots of both biodiversity and biomass, they function as breeding and nursing grounds for commercially important fish and are essential in providing ecosystem functions. Whilst studies have shown that fishery, ocean warming, and acidification threaten them, the effects of noise pollution on cold-water coral reefs remains unstudied. To study the severity of noise pollution at the Tisler reef, a long-term acoustic recorder was deployed from 29 January 2020 until 26 May 2020. From 15 March COVID-19 lockdown measures stopped passenger vessel traffic between Norway and Sweden. This study found that the overall noise levels were significantly lower after border closure, due to reduced ferry traffic, wind speeds, and sea level height. When comparing the median hourly noise levels of before vs. after border closure, this study measured a significant reduction in the 63–125 Hz 1/3 octave band noise levels of 8.94 ± 0.88 (MAD) dB during the day (07:00:00–19:59:59) and 1.94 ± 0.11 (MAD) dB during the night (20:00:00–06:59:59). Since there was no ferry traffic during the night, the drop in noise levels at night was likely driven by seasonal changes, i.e., the reduction in wind speed and sea level height when transitioning from winter to spring. Taking into account this seasonal effect, it can be deduced that the COVID-19 border closure reduced the noise levels in the 63–125 Hz 1/3 octave bands at the Tisler reef by 7.0 ± 0.99 (MAD) dB during the day. While the contribution of, and changes in biological, weather-related and geophysical sound sources remain to be assessed in more detail, understanding the extent of anthropogenic noise pollution at the Tisler cold-water coral reef is critical to guide effective management to ensure the long-term health and conservation of its ecosystem functions.

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