Biodiversity Across Trophic Levels Drives Multifunctionality in Highly Diverse Forests

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2018 Aug 2

PMID 30065285

Citations 38

Authors

Andreas Schuldt

Thorsten Assmann

Matteo Brezzi

Francois Buscot

David Eichenberg

Jessica Gutknecht

Werner Hardtle

Jin-Sheng He

Alexandra-Maria Klein

Peter Kuhn

Xiaojuan Liu

Keping Ma

Pascal A Niklaus

Katherina A Pietsch

Witoon Purahong

Michael Scherer-Lorenzen

Bernhard Schmid

Thomas Scholten

Michael Staab

Zhiyao Tang

Stefan Trogisch

Goddert von Oheimb

Christian Wirth

Tesfaye Wubet

Chao-Dong Zhu

Helge Bruelheide

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Human-induced biodiversity change impairs ecosystem functions crucial to human well-being. However, the consequences of this change for ecosystem multifunctionality are poorly understood beyond effects of plant species loss, particularly in regions with high biodiversity across trophic levels. Here we adopt a multitrophic perspective to analyze how biodiversity affects multifunctionality in biodiverse subtropical forests. We consider 22 independent measurements of nine ecosystem functions central to energy and nutrient flow across trophic levels. We find that individual functions and multifunctionality are more strongly affected by the diversity of heterotrophs promoting decomposition and nutrient cycling, and by plant functional-trait diversity and composition, than by tree species richness. Moreover, cascading effects of higher trophic-level diversity on functions originating from lower trophic-level processes highlight that multitrophic biodiversity is key to understanding drivers of multifunctionality. A broader perspective on biodiversity-multifunctionality relationships is crucial for sustainable ecosystem management in light of non-random species loss and intensified biotic disturbances under future environmental change.

Citing Articles

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