Rare Species Support Vulnerable Functions in High-Diversity Ecosystems

By David Mouillot, D. Bellwood, Christopher Baraloto, Jérôme Chave, R. Galzin, M. Harmelin-Vivien, Michel Kulbicki, S. Lavergne, S. Lavorel, N. Mouquet and 3 more. PLoS Biology, 2013

917 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The most unusual, and thus irreplaceable, functions performed by species in three different species-rich ecosystems are fulfilled by only the rare species in these ecosystems.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dd59e4f30c0d64bb03afac08c23971c2eb636ee4

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Citations in the corpus

Geographical, temporal and taxonomic biases in insect GBIF data on biodiversity and extinction (2021, background): “…lists of records (i.e. GBIF) and extinction (i.e. IUCN); even though they are key in the maintenance of ‘vulnerable functions’ (Lyons et al., 2005; Mouillot et al., 2013; Dee et al., 2019; Säterberg et al., 2019), and are the most prone to extinction due that they are naturally rare in…”
Protecting an ecosystem service: approaches to understanding and mitigating threats to wild insect pollinators (2016, background): “…level due to a lack of substitutable species 252 traits or, in other words, there are a small number of pollinators and/or plant species 253 possessing compatible functional traits to fill the functional gap should either mutualist 254 decline (Figure 2; Mouillot et al., 2013; Weiner et al., 2014).”
Optimizing agri-environment schemes for biodiversity, ecosystem services or both? (2014, background): “, 2001; Grime, 1998), although rare species may be functionally important in some cases (Mouillot et al., 2013; Walker et al., 1999).”
Measuring the functional redundancy of biological communities: a quantitative guide (2016, methodology): “Using a different approach, Mouillot et al. (2013) estimated the functional distinctiveness (i.e. the complement of redundancy) of single fish species using their functional distances from the rest of the species assemblage based on multiple traits.”
Marine benthic ecological functioning over decreasing taxonomic richness (2015, background): “Recent interests in these questions have gained new insights fromhigh diversity systems where rare species were found to support distinct trait (rare/ unique) combinations and as a consequence, vulnerable functions (Mouillot et al., 2013).”
Hyperdominance in the Amazonian Tree Flora (2013, background): “portance of the >10,000 rare and poorly known tree species in the Amazon (38), an appreciation”
Where less may be more: how the rare biosphere pulls ecosystems strings (2017, background): “Although the importance of rare species is increasingly being recognized for macroorganisms (Lyons et al., 2005; Mouillot et al., 2013; Soliveres et al., 2016), many rare microbial taxa (for example, singletons) are routinely removed from data sets, thereby systemically overlooking a substantial par”
Precipitation mediates the effect of human disturbance on the Brazilian Caatinga vegetation (2017, background): “The fact that rare species are the first to disappear in dry and disturbed sites, threatens future ecosystem function provisioning, as rare species are known to carry less-redundant combinations of functional traits that can be critical to ecosystem resilience (Mouillot et al. 2013).”
Functional over-redundancy and high functional vulnerability in global fish faunas on tropical reefs (2014, methodology): “fish functions (8); their relevance is detailed in SI Text.”
Dispersal distance and the pool of taxa, but not barriers, determine the colonisation of restored river reaches by benthic invertebrates (2014, background): “taining ecological functions, especially vulnerable functions (Mouillot et al., 2013).”