Decoupled responses of biodiversity facets driven from anuran vulnerability to climate and land use changes

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate and land use changes are the main drivers of biodiversity loss, promoting a major reorganization of the biota in all ecosystems. Biodiversity loss implies not only in the loss of species, but also entails losses in other dimensions of biodiversity, such as functional diversity, phylogenetic diversity and the diversity of ecological interactions.Yet, each of those facets of biodiversity may respond differently to extinctions. Here, we examine how extinction, driven by climate and land-use changes may affect different facets of diversity (functional, phylogenetic, and interaction diversity) by combining empirical data on interaction networks between anurans and their prey, species distribution modeling and extinction simulations.We used species distribution modeling to forecast the redistribution of anurans and create a species vulnerability rank based on expected range changes, then we simulate the extinction of anurans based on this rank. Next, we computed the variation in the functional, phylogenetic, and interaction diversities resulting from projected extinctions in four different ecoregions in the Neotropics. We found that the anuran vulnerability to climate and land-use change varies according to the level of trophic specialization. We also found a mismatch in the response of functional, phylogenetic, and interaction diversity to species’ extinction, whereby the effects on interaction diversity are stronger than those on phylogenetic and functional diversity. Although it is often assumed that interaction patterns are reflected by functional diversity, assessing the interaction patterns is necessary to understand how species loss may translate into the loss of ecosystem functions.

Global shortfalls of knowledge on anuran tadpoles

“…A textbook example in this regard is anurans (frogs and toads), whose larval (premetamorphic) stages are in general radically decoupled from adult forms in most biological aspects 6 . Both life stages may face independent threats from human activities, and survival may depend on completing each stage successfully 7 . Regrettably, our understanding of this group is highly uneven, as primary wide-scope research focuses on the adult phase 8,9 , and larval stages still need to be discovered for a significant part of the anuran tree.…”