Resource Heterogeneity Moderates the Biodiversity-Function Relationship in Real World Ecosystems

By J. Tylianakis, T. Rand, A. Kahmen, Alexandra-Maria Klein, Nina Buchmann, J. Perner, T. Tscharntke. PLoS Biology, 2008

276 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Numerous recent studies have tested the effects of plant, pollinator, and predator diversity on primary productivity, pollination, and consumption, respectively. Many have shown a positive relationship, particularly in controlled experiments, but variability in results has emphasized the context-dependency of these relationships. Complementary resource use may lead to a positive relationship between diversity and these processes, but only when a diverse array of niches is available to be partitioned among species. Therefore, the slope of the diversity-function relationship may change across differing levels of heterogeneity, but empirical evaluations of this pattern are lacking. Here we examine three important functions/properties in different real world (i.e., nonexperimental) ecosystems: plant biomass in German grasslands, parasitism rates across five habitat types in coastal Ecuador, and coffee pollination in agroforestry systems in Indonesia. We use general linear and structural equation modeling to demonstrate that the effect of diversity on these processes is context dependent, such that the slope of this relationship increases in environments where limiting resources (soil nutrients, host insects, and coffee flowers, respectively) are spatially heterogeneous. These real world patterns, combined with previous experiments, suggest that biodiversity may have its greatest impact on the functioning of diverse, naturally heterogeneous ecosystems.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

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Citations in the corpus

Biotic interactions in species distribution modelling: 10 questions to guide interpretation and avoid false conclusions (2018, background): “At other times, changes remain within a food web module (see Gilman et al., 2010; Tylianakis et al., 2008; Wardle, Barker, Yeates, Bonner, & Ghani, 2001).”
Functional group diversity of bee pollinators increases crop yield (2008, background): “The importance of this mechanism in natural pollinator communities is unknown, but evidence of a stronger diversity–pollination relationship when flowers are heterogeneously distributed ( Tylianakis et al. 2008) suggests that an analogous mechanism may operate.”
Biodiversity for multifunctional grasslands: equal productivity in high-diversity low-input and low-diversity high-input systems (2009, background): “slope of the diversity-productivity relationship were also attributed to increased heterogeneity of resources (Tylianakis et al., 2008).”
Nearby rainforest promotes coffee pollination by increasing spatio-temporal stability in bee species richness (2009, background): “Even more, variation in coffee flower density can affect the relationship of bee diversity and coffee pollination (Tylianakis et al., 2008).”
Spatial and temporal variation in pollinator effectiveness: do unmanaged insects provide consistent pollination services to mass flowering crops? (2012, unknown): “It is clear from other studies that resource heterogeneity can impact upon plant– insect interactions in highly modified systems (Isaia, Bona & Badino 2006; Tylianakis et al. 2008); however, we lack the data to explore the influence of local resources on variations in pollinator effectiveness as the”
Landscape moderation of biodiversity patterns and processes ‐ eight hypotheses (2012, background): “The earth is currently experiencing an unprecedented, accelerated loss of biodiversity (Sodhi & Ehrlich, 2010), altered interactions among species (Tylianakis et al., 2008a) and a decline in associated ecosystem functioning and services (MEA, 2005).”
Plant genetic diversity yields increased plant productivity and herbivore performance (2010, background): “Genotypic diversity may, as has been shown for interspecific diversity (Hooper & Vitousek 1997; Loreau & Hector 2001; Tilman et al. 2001; Hector et al. 2002; Cardinale et al. 2007; Tylianakis et al. 2008), potentially enhance primary productivity through additive (i.”
Pollen transport differs among bees and flies in a human‐modified landscape (2011, background): “Spatial heterogeneity in floral resources is therefore lower than that associated with more natural landscapes (Klein et al., 2008; Tylianakis et al., 2008).”