Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 287, Issue 1924, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.2501
Keywords
biodiversity change; ecosystem multifunctionality; resilience; trait correlations; organismal trade-offs
Categories
Funding
- Columbia University's Dean Fellowship
- New York Community Trust Edward Prince Goldman Scholarship in Science
- Earth Institute Fellowship
- NatureNet Science Fellowship
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Changes in biodiversity can severely affect ecosystem functioning, but the impacts of species loss on an ecosystem's ability to sustain multiple functions remain unclear. When considering individual functions, the impacts of biodiversity loss depend on correlations between species functional contributions and their extinction probabilities. When considering multiple functions, the impacts of biodiversity loss depend on correlations between species contributions to individual functions. However, how correlations between extinction probabilities and functional contributions determine the impact of biodiversity loss on multifunctionality (MF) is not well understood. Here, we use biodiversity loss simulations to examine the influence of correlations among multiple functions and extinction probabilities on the diversity-MF relationship. In contrast with random extinction, we find that the response of MF to biodiversity loss is influenced by the absence of positive correlations between species functional contributions, rather than by negative correlations. Communities with a high number of pairwise positive correlations in functional contributions achieve higher levels of MF, but are also less resilient to extinction. This work implies that understanding how species extinction probabilities correlate with their contribution to MF can help identify the degree to which MF will change with ongoing biodiversity loss and target conservation efforts to maximize MF resiliency.
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