| 1. |
- Dornelas, M., et al.
(författare)
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BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene
- 2018
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Ingår i: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-822X .- 1466-8238. ; 27:7, s. 760-786
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series. Our goal is to accelerate and facilitate quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Main types of variables included: The database contains 8,777,413 species abundance records, from assemblages consistently sampled for a minimum of 2 years, which need not necessarily be consecutive. In addition, the database contains metadata relating to sampling methodology and contextual information about each record. Spatial location and grain: BioTIME is a global database of 547,161 unique sampling locations spanning the marine, freshwater and terrestrial realms. Grain size varies across datasets from 0.0000000158 km(2) (158 cm(2)) to 100 km(2) (1,000,000,000,000 cm(2)). Time period and grainBio: TIME records span from 1874 to 2016. The minimal temporal grain across all datasets in BioTIME is a year. Major taxa and level of measurement: BioTIME includes data from 44,440 species across the plant and animal kingdoms, ranging from plants, plankton and terrestrial invertebrates to small and large vertebrates.
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| 2. |
- Gross, C. P., et al.
(författare)
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The biogeography of community assembly: latitude and predation drive variation in community trait distribution in a guild of epifaunal crustaceans
- 2022
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2954 .- 0962-8452. ; 289:1969
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While considerable evidence exists of biogeographic patterns in the intensity of species interactions, the influence of these patterns on variation in community structure is less clear. Studying how the distributions of traits in communities vary along global gradients can inform how variation in interactions and other factors contribute to the process of community assembly. Using a model selection approach on measures of trait dispersion in crustaceans associated with eelgrass (Zostera marina) spanning 30° of latitude in two oceans, we found that dispersion strongly increased with increasing predation and decreasing latitude. Ocean and epiphyte load appeared as secondary predictors; Pacific communities were more overdispersed while Atlantic communities were more clustered, and increasing epiphytes were associated with increased clustering. By examining how species interactions and environmental filters influence community structure across biogeographic regions, we demonstrate how both latitudinal variation in species interactions and historical contingency shape these responses. Community trait distributions have implications for ecosystem stability and functioning, and integrating large-scale observations of environmental filters, species interactions and traits can help us predict how communities may respond to environmental change.
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| 3. |
- Duffy, J. E., et al.
(författare)
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Biodiversity mediates top-down control in eelgrass ecosystems: a global comparative-experimental approach
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 18:7, s. 696-705
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nutrient pollution and reduced grazing each can stimulate algal blooms as shown by numerous experiments. But because experiments rarely incorporate natural variation in environmental factors and biodiversity, conditions determining the relative strength of bottom-up and top-down forcing remain unresolved. We factorially added nutrients and reduced grazing at 15 sites across the range of the marine foundation species eelgrass (Zostera marina) to quantify how top-down and bottom-up control interact with natural gradients in biodiversity and environmental forcing. Experiments confirmed modest top-down control of algae, whereas fertilisation had no general effect. Unexpectedly, grazer and algal biomass were better predicted by cross-site variation in grazer and eelgrass diversity than by global environmental gradients. Moreover, these large-scale patterns corresponded strikingly with prior small-scale experiments. Our results link global and local evidence that biodiversity and top-down control strongly influence functioning of threatened seagrass ecosystems, and suggest that biodiversity is comparably important to global change stressors.
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| 4. |
- Edgar, Graham J., et al.
(författare)
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Abundance and local-scale processes contribute to multi-phyla gradients in global marine diversity
- 2017
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Ingår i: Science Advances. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2375-2548. ; 3:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Among themost enduring ecological challenges is an integrated theory explaining the latitudinal biodiversity gradient, including discrepancies observed at different spatial scales. Analysis of Reef Life Survey data for 4127 marine species at 2406 coral and rocky sites worldwide confirms that the total ecoregion richness peaks in low latitudes, near +15 degrees N and -15 degrees S. However, although richness at survey sites is maximal near the equator for vertebrates, it peaks at high latitudes for large mobile invertebrates. Site richness for different groups is dependent on abundance, which is in turn correlated with temperature for fishes and nutrients for macroinvertebrates. We suggest that temperature-mediated fish predation and herbivory have constrained mobile macroinvertebrate diversity at the site scale across the tropics. Conversely, at the ecoregion scale, richness responds positively to coral reef area, highlighting potentially huge global biodiversity losses with coral decline. Improved conservation outcomes require management frameworks, informed by hierarchical monitoring, that cover differing site- and regional-scale processes across diverse taxa, including attention to invertebrate species, which appear disproportionately threatened by warming seas.
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| 5. |
- Lefcheck, J. S., et al.
(författare)
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Biodiversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality across trophic levels and habitats
- 2015
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 6. |
- Stuart-Smith, Rick D., et al.
(författare)
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Integrating abundance and functional traits reveals new global hotspots of fish diversity
- 2013
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 501:7468, s. 539-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Species richness has dominated our view of global biodiversity patterns for centuries(1,2). The dominance of this paradigm is reflected in the focus by ecologists and conservation managers on richness and associated occurrence-based measures for understanding drivers of broad-scale diversity patterns and as a biological basis for management(3,4). However, this is changing rapidly, as it is now recognized that not only the number of species but the species present, their phenotypes and the number of individuals of each species are critical in determining the nature and strength of the relationships between species diversity and a range of ecological functions (such as biomass production and nutrient cycling)(5). Integrating these measures should provide a more relevant representation of global biodiversity patterns in terms of ecological functions than that provided by simple species counts. Here we provide comparisons of a traditional global biodiversity distribution measure based on richness with metrics that incorporate species abundances and functional traits. We use data from standardized quantitative surveys of 2,473 marine reef fish species at 1,844 sites, spanning 133 degrees of latitude from all ocean basins, to identify new diversity hotspots in some temperate regions and the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. These relate to high diversity of functional traits amongst individuals in the community (calculated using Rao's Q(6)), and differ from previously reported patterns in functional diversity and richness for terrestrial animals, which emphasize species-rich tropical regions only(7,8). There is a global trend for greater evenness in the number of individuals of each species, across the reef fish species observed at sites ('community evenness'), at higher latitudes. This contributes to the distribution of functional diversity hotspots and contrasts with well-known latitudinal gradients in richness(2,4). Our findings suggest that the contribution of species diversity to a range of ecosystem functions varies over large scales, and imply that in tropical regions, which have higher numbers of species, each species contributes proportionally less to community-level ecological processes on average than species in temperate regions. Metrics of ecological function usefully complement metrics of species diversity in conservation management, including when identifying planning priorities and when tracking changes to biodiversity values.
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| 7. |
- Stuart-Smith, Rick D., et al.
(författare)
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The potential of trait-based approaches to contribute to marine conservation
- 2015
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Ingår i: Marine Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0308-597X .- 1872-9460. ; 51, s. 148-150
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The value of diversity metrics to represent ecological communities and inform broad-scale conservation objectives and policy has often been subject to debate and uncertainty [1,2]. In practice, diversity metrics are important in setting management and conservation priorities, just as economic indices contribute to global monetary and financial policies. Thus, key challenges for ecologists are to identify new ways to view and summarise patterns in biodiversity and improve on the metrics available for management purposes. In a recent paper on functional diversity patterns in reef fishes [3], we highlighted the potential of new insights gained from functional trait-based approaches to inform marine management, stressing the need to develop and refine biodiversity measures that are linked to ecology (rather than taxonomy). We used a unique, fisheries-independent reef fish identity and abundance dataset, collected using standardised methods from equatorial to high latitude regions all over the world, to provide the first global view of the distribution of individuals amongst species (including a measure of evenness) and functional traits amongst marine communities. A recent paper by Robinson et al. [4] published in Marine Policy criticised the use of our evenness index as a measure of biodiversity, and questioned the use of functional trait-based metrics derived from surveys of standardised areas for decisions relating to broad-scale management of marine systems. In this paper we respond to Robinson et al. and rebut their claims related to sampling bias and broad-scale applicability of trait-based approaches.
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| 8. |
- Byrnes, J. E. K., et al.
(författare)
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Investigating the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality: Challenges and solutions
- 2014
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Ingår i: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. - 2041-210X. ; 5:2, s. 111-124
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Summary: Extensive research shows that more species-rich assemblages are generally more productive and efficient in resource use than comparable assemblages with fewer species. But the question of how diversity simultaneously affects the wide variety of ecological functions that ecosystems perform remains relatively understudied. It presents several analytical and empirical challenges that remain unresolved. In particular, researchers have developed several disparate metrics to quantify multifunctionality, each characterizing different aspects of the concept and each with pros and cons. We compare four approaches to characterizing multifunctionality and its dependence on biodiversity, quantifying (i) magnitudes of multiple individual functions separately, (ii) the extent to which different species promote different functions, (iii) the average level of a suite of functions and (iv) the number of functions that simultaneously exceeds a critical threshold. We illustrate each approach using data from the pan-European BIODEPTH experiment and the R multifunc package developed for this purpose, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and implement several methodological improvements. We conclude that an extension of the fourth approach that systematically explores all possible threshold values provides the most comprehensive description of multifunctionality to date. We outline this method and recommend its use in future research. © 2013 British Ecological Society.
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| 9. |
- Duffy, J. Emmett, et al.
(författare)
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A Pleistocene legacy structures variation in modern seagrass ecosystems
- 2022
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 119:32
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Distribution of Earth's biomes is structured by the match between climate and plant traits, which in turn shape associated communities and ecosystem processes and services. However, that climate-trait match can be disrupted by historical events, with lasting ecosystem impacts. As Earth's environment changes faster than at any time in human history, critical questions are whether and how organismal traits and ecosystems can adjust to altered conditions. We quantified the relative importance of current environmental forcing versus evolutionary history in shaping the growth form (stature and biomass) and associated community of eelgrass (Zostera marina), a widespread foundation plant of marine ecosystems along Northern Hemisphere coastlines, which experienced major shifts in distribution and genetic composition during the Pleistocene. We found that eelgrass stature and biomass retain a legacy of the Pleistocene colonization of the Atlantic from the ancestral Pacific range and of more recent within-basin bottlenecks and genetic differentiation. This evolutionary legacy in turn influences the biomass of associated algae and invertebrates that fuel coastal food webs, with effects comparable to or stronger than effects of current environmental forcing. Such historical lags in phenotypic acclimatization may constrain ecosystem adjustments to rapid anthropogenic climate change, thus altering predictions about the future functioning of ecosystems.
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| 10. |
- Gamfeldt, Lars, 1975, et al.
(författare)
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Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: What's known and what's next?
- 2015
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 124:3, s. 252-265
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Marine ecosystems are experiencing rapid and pervasive changes in biodiversity and species composition. Understanding the ecosystem consequences of these changes is critical to effectively managing these systems. Over the last several years, numerous experimental manipulations of species richness have been performed, yet existing quantitative syntheses have focused on a just a subset of processes measured in experiments and, as such, have not summarized the full data available from marine systems. Here, we present the results of a meta-analysis of 110 marine experiments from 42 studies that manipulated the species richness of organisms across a range of taxa and trophic levels and analysed the consequences for various ecosystem processes (categorised as production, consumption or biogeochemical fluxes). Our results show that, generally, mixtures of species tend to enhance levels of ecosystem function relative to the average component species in monoculture, but have no effect or a negative effect on functioning relative to the 'highest- performing' species. These results are largely consistent with those from other syntheses, and extend conclusions to ecological functions that are commonly measured in the marine realm (e.g. nutrient release from sediment bioturbation). For experiments that manipulated three or more levels of richness, we attempted to discern the functional form of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship. We found that, for response variables related to consumption, a power-function best described the relationship, which is also consistent with previous findings. However, we identified a linear relationship between richness and production. Combined, our results suggest that changes in the number of species will, on average, tend to alter the functioning of marine ecosystems. We outline several research frontiers that will allow us to more fully understand how, why, and when diversity may drive the functioning of marine ecosystems. Synthesis The oceans host an incredible number and variety of species. However, human activities are driving rapid changes in the marine environment. It is imperative we understand ecosystem consequences of any associated loss of species. We summarized data from 110 experiments that manipulated species diversity and evaluated resulting changes to a range of ecosystem responses. We show that losing species, on average, decreases productivity, growth, and a myriad of other processes related to how marine organisms capture and utilize resources. Finally, we suggest that the loss of species may have stronger consequences for some processes than others.
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