Biodiversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality across trophic levels and habitats

By J. Lefcheck, Jarrett E. K. Byrnes, F. Isbell, Lars Gamfeldt, J. Griffin, N. Eisenhauer, M. J. Hensel, Andy Hector, B. Cardinale, J. Emmett Duffy. Nature Communications, 2015

730 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The importance of biodiversity for the integrated functioning of ecosystems remains unclear because most evidence comes from analyses of biodiversity’s effect on individual functions. Here we show that the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem function become more important as more functions are considered. We present the first systematic investigation of biodiversity’s effect on ecosystem multifunctionality across multiple taxa, trophic levels and habitats using a comprehensive database of 94 manipulations of species richness. We show that species-rich communities maintained multiple functions at higher levels than depauperate ones. These effects were stronger for herbivore biodiversity than for plant biodiversity, and were remarkably consistent across aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Despite observed tradeoffs, the overall effect of biodiversity on multifunctionality grew stronger as more functions were considered. These results indicate that prior research has underestimated the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning by focusing on individual functions and taxonomic groups. The influence of biodiversity on multiple ecosystem processes is not well understood. Analysing 94 biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments, Lefcheck et al. find that increased species richness maintains more ecological functions, across multiple taxa, trophic levels and habitats.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5777658153c8e5439cbfa8d231ce3969980a7ece

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Citations in the corpus

Synthesizing the effects of large, wild herbivore exclusion on ecosystem function (2019, background): “What is more, productivity covariates like climate, land-use, and nutrient availability often significantly moderate these effects (Duffy, Godwin, & Cardinale, 2017; Lefcheck et al., 2015; Soliveres et al., 2016).”
Synthesis and future research directions linking tree diversity to growth, survival, and damage in a global network of tree diversity experiments (2018, background): “Though BEF dynamics vary across systems, diversity repeatedly has affected ecosystem functionality (Cardinale et al., 2011; Lefcheck et al., 2015).”
Microbial richness and composition independently drive soil multifunctionality (2017, background): “Unlike plants or animals (Hooper et al., 2005; Lefcheck et al., 2015), we have only a limited understanding of the relationships between microbial diversity and composition, and ecosystem functioning, particularly in terrestrial environments (Bardgett & van der Putten, 2014).”
Multiple facets of diversity effects on plant productivity: Species richness, functional diversity, species identity and intraspecific competition (2019, background): “Methods in Ecology and 489 Evolution, 8(10), 1233–1240. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12804 490 Barry, K. E., Mommer, L., van Ruijven, J., Wirth, C., Wright, A. J., Bai, Y., … Weigelt, A. 491 (2019).”
Synthesizing multiple data types for biological conservation using integrated population models (2018, background): “Biodiversity loss is one of the most pressing environmental problems, impacting ecosystem functions, community dynamics, and human and wildlife health (Cardinale et al., 2012; Lefcheck et al., 2015).”
Biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning in a 15-year grassland experiment: Patterns, mechanisms, and open questions (2017, background): “the effect of biodiversity on ecosystem multifunctionality (e.g. Hector & Bagchi 2007; Allan et al. 2015; Lefcheck et al. 2015).”
Soil aggregate size-dependent relationships between microbial functional diversity and multifunctionality (2021, background): “Furthermore, biodiversity has been shown to enhance ecosystem multifunctionality (Lefcheck et al., 2015; Delgado-Baquerizo et al., 2016a), and this relationship is more linear than saturating (e.”