Population structure determines functional differences among species and ecosystem processes

Rudolf, Volker H. W.; Rasmussen, Nick L.

doi:10.1038/ncomms3318

Cited by 93 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The keystone species in soil environment play an exceptionally important role in determining the structure and function of ecosystems. Rudolf and Rasmussen (2013) showed that differences in food network structure were significantly correlated with changes in all ecosystem processes. The most widely used definition for keystone species is one "whose impact on its community or ecosystem is large, and disproportionately large relative to its abundance" (Power et al, 1996).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to , after abundance data have been obtained, it is possible to predict microbial relationships under the premise that strongly non-random distribution patterns are mostly due to ecological reasons. Studies on ecosystem function are traditionally limited to measurements of changes in species diversity and composition limiting our ability to link the structure of communities to the function of natural ecosystems (Philippot et al, 2013;Rudolf and Rasmussen, 2013). An important benefit of networks to study microbial ecology is the ability to understand which organisms are most important in maintaining the structure and interactions of microbial communities in soils.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Network topology reveals high connectance levels and few key microbial genera within soils

Lupatini

Suleiman

Jacques

et al. 2014

Front. Environ. Sci.

235

116

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Network topology reveals high connectance levels and few key microbial genera within soils

Lupatini

Suleiman

Jacques

et al. 2014

Front. Environ. Sci.

235

116

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“…First, species identity itself cannot be used to a priori predict the strength and type of ecological interactions of organisms without additional information about the trait and biology of the species. Secondly, it ignores any variation in ecological interactions with species, despite the growing evidence indicating that functional differences within species can rival or even exceed differences between species [2][3][4][5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resolving the roles of body size and species identity in driving functional diversity

et al. 2014

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Efforts to characterize food webs have generated two influential approaches that reduce the complexity of natural communities. The traditional approach groups individuals based on their species identity, while recently developed approaches group individuals based on their body size. While each approach has provided important insights, they have largely been used in parallel in different systems. Consequently, it remains unclear how body size and species identity interact, hampering our ability to develop a more holistic framework that integrates both approaches. We address this conceptual gap by developing a framework which describes how both approaches are related to each other, revealing that both approaches share common but untested assumptions about how variation across size classes or species influences differences in ecological interactions among consumers. Using freshwater mesocosms with dragonfly larvae as predators, we then experimentally demonstrate that while body size strongly determined how predators affected communities, these size effects were species specific and frequently nonlinear, violating a key assumption underlying both size-and species-based approaches. Consequently, neither purely species-nor size-based approaches were adequate to predict functional differences among predators. Instead, functional differences emerged from the synergistic effects of body size and species identity. This clearly demonstrates the need to integrate size-and species-based approaches to predict functional diversity within communities.

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“…Body size often relates to these functions according to discrete breaks or thresholds in body size rather than following a continuous allometric relationship. For example, body size alone could not predict basal ecosystem multifunctionality in aquatic invertebrate communities because individuals of different size classes interacted with lower trophic levels in fundamentally different, nonscalable ways (i.e., size‐dependent foraging preferences: Rudolf and Rasmussen 2013b). Moreover, changing animal behaviors may alter nonlinear body size‐function relationships, and deterministic predictions from Jensen's inequality may not perform realistically in such situations (Benedetti‐Cecchi 2005; Inouye 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2012; Toscano and Griffen 2012; Norkko et al. 2013; Rudolf and Rasmussen 2013b), a perennial challenge involves the logistical constraints of experiments or natural field observations where size structure is often confounded with mean body size. For any function of interest that is predicted to scale allometrically (e.g., foraging rate, nutrient recycling, productivity), varying the distribution around the mean body size will deterministically alter the aggregate sum of that function at the population level following Jensen's inequality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling the influences of mean body size and size structure on ecosystem functioning: an example of nutrient recycling by a non‐native crayfish

Fritschie

Olden

2015

Ecology and Evolution

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Body size is a fundamental functional trait that can be used to forecast individuals' responses to environmental change and their contribution to ecosystem functioning. However, information on the mean and variation of size distributions often confound one another when relating body size to aggregate functioning. Given that size‐based metrics are used as indicators of ecosystem status, it is important to identify the specific aspects of size distributions that mediate ecosystem functioning. Our goal was to simultaneously account for the mean, variance, and shape of size distributions when relating body size to aggregate ecosystem functioning. We take advantage of habitat‐specific differences in size distributions to estimate nutrient recycling by a non‐native crayfish using mean‐field and variance‐incorporating approaches. Crayfishes often substantially influence ecosystem functioning through their omnivorous role in aquatic food webs. As predicted from Jensen's inequality, considering only the mean body size of crayfish overestimated aggregate effects on ecosystem functioning. This bias declined with mean body size such that mean‐field and variance‐incorporating estimates of ecosystem functioning were similar for samples at mean body sizes >7.5 g. At low mean body size, mean‐field bias in ecosystem functioning mismatch predictions from Jensen's inequality, likely because of the increasing skewness of the size distribution. Our findings support the prediction that variance around the mean can alter the relationship between body size and ecosystem functioning, especially at low mean body size. However, methods to account for mean‐field bias performed poorly in samples with highly skewed distributions, indicating that changes in the shape of the distribution, in addition to the variance, may confound mean‐based estimates of ecosystem functioning. Given that many biological functions scale allometrically, explicitly defining and experimentally or statistically isolating the effects of the mean, variance, and shape of size distributions is necessary to begin generalizing relationships between animal body size and ecosystem functioning.

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Population structure determines functional differences among species and ecosystem processes

Cited by 93 publications

References 41 publications

Network topology reveals high connectance levels and few key microbial genera within soils

Network topology reveals high connectance levels and few key microbial genera within soils

Resolving the roles of body size and species identity in driving functional diversity

Disentangling the influences of mean body size and size structure on ecosystem functioning: an example of nutrient recycling by a non‐native crayfish

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