Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Observational Analyses

Dee, Laura E.; Kimmel, Kaitlin; Hayden, Meghan T.

doi:10.1002/9781119902911.ch6

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 104 publications

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“…The results confirmed that aridity and ammonia outweighed the effect of species richness on temporal stability, with the interaction between aridity and ammonia explaining the largest variance of temporal stability (Supporting information). This is inconsistent with many studies reporting a positive relationship between species richness and temporal stability in response to manipulated global changes (Hautier et al 2020, Valencia et al 2020), but consistent with the results from Dee et al (2022) showing that most observational studies found no relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. It may be because species richness may not fully represent plant diversity over large areas, and the fact that landscape properties, including dispersal, are more likely to related to ecosystem functioning (Manning et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 76%

“…It may be because species richness may not fully represent plant diversity over large areas, and the fact that landscape properties, including dispersal, are more likely to related to ecosystem functioning (Manning et al 2019). Besides, confounding variables like soil fertility can influence the causal relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (Dee et al 2022). Our result that species richness was not related to temporal stability is also inconsistent with the results of many studies at large spatial scales (Oehri et al 2017, García‐Palacios et al 2018, Gilbert et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aridity and soil fertility, not species richness, interact to affect temporal stability of primary productivity along a natural gradient in northern China

Huang

Vries

Zhou

et al. 2023

Oikos

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There is mounting evidence from experimental studies that drought and nutrient enrichment can interact to impact the biodiversity and productivity of terrestrial ecosystems. Whether such interactive effect influences plant diversity and the temporal stability of community productivity of natural ecosystems is unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, we combined a field survey of plant diversity and soil conditions with remote sensing temporal estimates of primary productivity in grasslands along a natural gradient in northern China. We found that aridity and soil ammonium (NH4+‐N) interacted to influence temporal stability of NDVI. That is, the relationship between ammonium and temporal stability of NDVI shifted from positive to negative due to increased standard deviation of NDVI with increasing aridity. Species richness was not related to temporal stability because it influenced the mean and standard deviation of NDVI proportionally. As a result, soil fertility outweighed the contribution of species richness to temporal stability. Our study demonstrates the synergistic effect of aridity and soil fertility, but not species richness, on temporal stability along a large natural gradient. Predicting how environmental drivers affect diversity and the stable provisioning of ecosystem services in real‐world ecosystems therefore requires a better understanding of the complex interactions among environmental drivers.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 76%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aridity and soil fertility, not species richness, interact to affect temporal stability of primary productivity along a natural gradient in northern China

Huang

Vries

Zhou

et al. 2023

Oikos

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“…There is mounting evidence from experimental studies on manipulated systems of positive biodiversity-stability relationships at multiple spatial scales (Hautier et al, 2020;Liang et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2019Wang et al, , 2021Zhang et al, 2019). Given that the planet is facing significant changes in biodiversity across scales (Dee et al, 2022;Van der Plas, 2019), there has been a growing interest in returning to real-world ecosystems to understand whether and how biodiversity stabilizes ecosystem functioning in natural ecosystems and at broader scales (Catano et al, 2020;Liang et al, 2022;Patrick et al, 2021;Qiao et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is mounting evidence from experimental studies on manipulated systems of positive biodiversity‐stability relationships at multiple spatial scales (Hautier et al, 2020; Liang et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2019, 2021; Zhang et al, 2019). Given that the planet is facing significant changes in biodiversity across scales (Dee et al, 2022; Van der Plas, 2019), there has been a growing interest in returning to real‐world ecosystems to understand whether and how biodiversity stabilizes ecosystem functioning in natural ecosystems and at broader scales (Catano et al, 2020; Liang et al, 2022; Patrick et al, 2021; Qiao et al, 2022). Unlike real‐world ecological communities, experimental communities are usually established in a homogeneous environment at relatively small spatial extents (Albrecht et al, 2021; Hautier & Van der Plas, 2022), which limits our understanding of ecosystems in heterogeneous environments (Chase et al, 2019; Gonzalez et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latitudinal patterns of forest ecosystem stability across spatial scales as affected by biodiversity and environmental heterogeneity

Qiao

Lamy

Wang

et al. 2023

Global Change Biology

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Our planet is facing a variety of serious threats from climate change that are unfolding unevenly across the globe. Uncovering the spatial patterns of ecosystem stability is important for predicting the responses of ecological processes and biodiversity patterns to climate change. However, the understanding of the latitudinal pattern of ecosystem stability across scales and of the underlying ecological drivers is still very limited. Accordingly, this study examines the latitudinal patterns of ecosystem stability at the local and regional spatial scale using a natural assembly of forest metacommunities that are distributed over a large temperate forest region, considering a range of potential environmental drivers. We found that the stability of regional communities (regional stability) and asynchronous dynamics among local communities (spatial asynchrony) both decreased with increasing latitude, whereas the stability of local communities (local stability) did not. We tested a series of hypotheses that potentially drive the spatial patterns of ecosystem stability, and found that although the ecological drivers of biodiversity, climatic history, resource conditions, climatic stability, and environmental heterogeneity varied with latitude, latitudinal patterns of ecosystem stability at multiple scales were affected by biodiversity and environmental heterogeneity. In particular, α diversity is positively associated with local stability, while β diversity is positively associated with spatial asynchrony, although both relationships are weak. Our study provides the first evidence that latitudinal patterns of the temporal stability of naturally assembled forest metacommunities across scales are driven by biodiversity and environmental heterogeneity. Our findings suggest that the preservation of plant biodiversity within and between forest communities and the maintenance of heterogeneous landscapes can be crucial to buffer forest ecosystems at higher latitudes from the faster and more intense negative impacts of climate change in the future.

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Clarifying the effect of biodiversity on productivity in natural ecosystems with longitudinal data and methods for causal inference

et al. 2023

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Causal effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functions can be estimated using experimental or observational designs — designs that pose a tradeoff between drawing credible causal inferences from correlations and drawing generalizable inferences. Here, we develop a design that reduces this tradeoff and revisits the question of how plant species diversity affects productivity. Our design leverages longitudinal data from 43 grasslands in 11 countries and approaches borrowed from fields outside of ecology to draw causal inferences from observational data. Contrary to many prior studies, we estimate that increases in plot-level species richness caused productivity to decline: a 10% increase in richness decreased productivity by 2.4%, 95% CI [−4.1, −0.74]. This contradiction stems from two sources. First, prior observational studies incompletely control for confounding factors. Second, most experiments plant fewer rare and non-native species than exist in nature. Although increases in native, dominant species increased productivity, increases in rare and non-native species decreased productivity, making the average effect negative in our study. By reducing the tradeoff between experimental and observational designs, our study demonstrates how observational studies can complement prior ecological experiments and inform future ones.

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Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Observational Analyses

Cited by 4 publications

References 104 publications

Aridity and soil fertility, not species richness, interact to affect temporal stability of primary productivity along a natural gradient in northern China

Aridity and soil fertility, not species richness, interact to affect temporal stability of primary productivity along a natural gradient in northern China

Latitudinal patterns of forest ecosystem stability across spatial scales as affected by biodiversity and environmental heterogeneity

Clarifying the effect of biodiversity on productivity in natural ecosystems with longitudinal data and methods for causal inference

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