1. |
- Ahlberg, Erik, et al.
(author)
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"Vi klimatforskare stödjer Greta och skolungdomarna"
- 2019
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In: Dagens nyheter (DN debatt). - 1101-2447.
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Journal article (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- DN DEBATT 15/3. Sedan industrialiseringens början har vi använt omkring fyra femtedelar av den mängd fossilt kol som får förbrännas för att vi ska klara Parisavtalet. Vi har bara en femtedel kvar och det är bråttom att kraftigt reducera utsläppen. Det har Greta Thunberg och de strejkande ungdomarna förstått. Därför stödjer vi deras krav, skriver 270 klimatforskare.
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2. |
- Alsterberg, Christian, 1982, et al.
(author)
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Consumers mediate the effects of experimental ocean acidification and warming on primary producers.
- 2013
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 110:21, s. 8603-8608
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- It is well known that ocean acidification can have profound impacts on marine organisms. However, we know little about the direct and indirect effects of ocean acidification and also how these effects interact with other features of environmental change such as warming and declining consumer pressure. In this study, we tested whether the presence of consumers (invertebrate mesograzers) influenced the interactive effects of ocean acidification and warming on benthic microalgae in a seagrass community mesocosm experiment. Net effects of acidification and warming on benthic microalgal biomass and production, as assessed by analysis of variance, were relatively weak regardless of grazer presence. However, partitioning these net effects into direct and indirect effects using structural equation modeling revealed several strong relationships. In the absence of grazers, benthic microalgae were negatively and indirectly affected by sediment-associated microalgal grazers and macroalgal shading, but directly and positively affected by acidification and warming. Combining indirect and direct effects yielded no or weak net effects. In the presence of grazers, almost all direct and indirect climate effects were nonsignificant. Our analyses highlight that (i) indirect effects of climate change may be at least as strong as direct effects, (ii) grazers are crucial in mediating these effects, and (iii) effects of ocean acidification may be apparent only through indirect effects and in combination with other variables (e.g., warming). These findings highlight the importance of experimental designs and statistical analyses that allow us to separate and quantify the direct and indirect effects of multiple climate variables on natural communities.
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3. |
- Alsterberg, Christian, 1982, et al.
(author)
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Habitat diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality-The importance of direct and indirect effects
- 2017
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In: Science Advances. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2375-2548. ; 3:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Ecosystems worldwide are facing habitat homogenization due to human activities. Although it is commonly proposed that such habitat homogenization can have negative repercussions for ecosystem functioning, this question has yet to receive explicit scientific attention. We expand on the framework for evaluating the functional consequences of bio-diversity loss by scaling up from the level of species to the level of the entire habitats. Just as species diversity generally fosters ecosystem functioning through positive interspecies interactions, we hypothesize that different habitats within ecosystems can facilitate each other through structural complementarity and through exchange of material and energy across habitats. We show that experimental ecosystems comprised of a diversity of habitats show higher levels of multiple ecosystem functions than ecosystems with low habitat diversity. Our results demonstrate that the effect of habitat diversity on multifunctionality varies with season; it has direct effects on ecosystem functioning in summer and indirect effects, via changes in species diversity, in autumn, but no effect in spring. We propose that joint consideration of habitat diversity and species diversity will prove valuable for both environmental management and basic research.
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4. |
- Alsterberg, Christian, 1982, et al.
(author)
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Multiple stressors and multifunctionality: limited effects on an illuminated benthic system
- 2014
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In: Biology Letters. - : The Royal Society. - 1744-9561 .- 1744-957X. ; 10:12
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The bulk of experiments that study stressor effects on ecosystem functioning consider only individual functions one at a time, and such narrow focus may well bias our understanding of the overall impact on ecosystem functioning. We used data from six published experiments in which marine illuminated sediment systems were exposed to nutrient enrichment, toxicants, sedimentation and warming, either alone or in combination. Measured functions were primary production, community respiration, inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus fluxes, and autotrophic biomass. We calculated two indices of multifunctionality that simultaneously considered all six functions: (i) a weighted average level of the functions and (ii) the number of functions that simultaneously exceed a critical threshold level. Stressors affected individual functions both positively and negatively, but multifunctionality was generally unaffected by both single and joint stressors. The filtering capacity of coastal illuminated sediment systems thus appears resilient to exposure to moderate levels of multiple stressors, most probably due to the robustness of the benthic microalgal community. We recommend using a multifunctionality approach in future studies on cumulative stressor effects on ecosystem functioning, particularly when considering functions related to ecosystem services.
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5. |
- Brunner, Benedikt, et al.
(author)
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Macroalgae maintain growth outside their observed distributions: Implications for biodiversity-ecosystem functioning at landscape scales
- 2023
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In: Journal of Ecology. - 0022-0477 .- 1365-2745. ; 111:6, s. 1362-1373
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The spatial insurance hypothesis states that at landscape scales with environmental variability between different places, biodiversity increases ecosystem functioning if species respond asynchronously to environmental variation, and they are highest functioning in places where they dominate the relative abundance. Under this hypothesis, observed species turnover between places in a landscape with environmental variation might suggest that species diversity is an important driver of landscape-scale ecosystem functioning. However, the spatial insurance implicitly assumes that species found in one place in the landscape will not be able to maintain high functioning in other places. Given this assumption of the spatial insurance hypothesis, we would predict that species' functioning in monoculture should decline if transplanted to a different place on an environmental gradient, away from where they naturally dominate. If this is the case, we would expect that the loss of one species in one place of the environmental gradient could not be compensated through the establishment of another species in that place. We tested this prediction using a model system of marine macroalgae on intertidal rocky shores on the Swedish west coast. We performed a reciprocal transplant experiment with adult individuals of four fucoid seaweeds that dominate the standing stock biomass at different depths on these shores and monitored their relative growth rate over 2 months. Counter to the assumptions made by the spatial insurance hypothesis, growth rates for three of the four species showed limited responses to being transplanted to different depth zones. Spatial insurance may, hence, play a minor role in sustaining landscape ecosystem functioning in this and other systems. Synthesis. The functional consequences of species loss at landscape scales may not be as obvious as observational studies and ecological models suggest. Consequently, natural patterns of species turnover should not be used directly to argue for the role of biodiversity at landscape scales. Instead, how species may or may not be able to compensate for the loss of other species is a critical aspect if we are to understand how changes in biodiversity at the landscape scale affect ecosystem functioning.
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6. |
- Byrnes, J. E. K., et al.
(author)
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Investigating the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality: Challenges and solutions
- 2014
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In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. - 2041-210X. ; 5:2, s. 111-124
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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7. |
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8. |
- Duffy, J. E., et al.
(author)
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Biodiversity mediates top-down control in eelgrass ecosystems: a global comparative-experimental approach
- 2015
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In: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 18:7, s. 696-705
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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9. |
- Eklöf, Johan, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Community-level effects of rapid experiment warming and consumer loss outweigh effects of rapid ocean acidification.
- 2015
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In: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 124:8, s. 1040-1049
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Climate change and consumer loss simultaneously affect marine ecosystems, but we have limited understanding of the relative importance of these factors and the interactions between them. Moreover, effects of environmental change are mediated by organism traits or life histories, which determine their sensitivity. Yet, trait-based analyses have rarely been used to understand the effects of climate change, especially in the marine environment. Here we used a five-week mesocosm experiment to assess the single and interactive effects of 1) rapid ocean warming, 2) rapid ocean acidification, and 3) simulated consumer loss, on the diversity and composition of macrofauna communities in eelgrass Zostera marina beds. Experimental warming (ambient versus + 3.2°C) and loss of a key consumer (the omnivorous crustacean, Gammarus locusta) both increased macrofauna richness and abundance, and altered overall species trait distributions and life history composition. Warming and consumer-loss favored poorly defended epifaunal crustaceans (tube-building amphipods), and species that brood their offspring. We suggest these organisms were favored because warming and consumer-loss caused increased metabolism, food supply and, potentially, settling substrate, and lowered predation pressure from the omnivorous G. locusta. Importantly, we found no single, or interactive, effects of the rapid ocean acidification (ambient versus −0.35 pH units). We suggest this result reflects natural variability in the native habitat and, potentially, the short duration of the experiment: organisms in these communities routinely experience rapid diurnal pH fluctuations that exceed the mean ocean acidification predicted for the coming century (and used in our experiments). In summary, our study indicates that macrofauna in shallow vegetated ecosystems will be significantly more affected by rapid warming and consumer diversity loss than by rapid ocean acidification.
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