Journal
OIKOS
Volume 2023, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/oik.09431
Keywords
biodiversity and ecosystem function; invertebrates; large river; riverscape; secondary production
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Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function and how it is influenced by the Earth's surface is a central objective in ecology. This study used high-resolution habitat mapping and field sampling to investigate the connections among geophysical habitat structure, invertebrate communities, and secondary production in two North American riverscapes. The results show that sediment size patterns have a strong influence on invertebrate assemblages, and these relationships drive positive connections between biodiversity and secondary production.
Understanding how the Earth's surface (i.e. 'nature's stage') influences connections between biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF) is a central objective in ecology. Despite recent calls to examine these connections at multiple trophic levels and at more complex and realistic scales, little is known about how landscape structure shapes BEF relationships among animal communities in nature. We coupled high-resolution habitat mapping with extensive field sampling to quantify connections among the geophysical habitat templet, invertebrate assemblages and secondary production in two large North American riverscapes. Patterns of sediment size governed invertebrate assemblage structure, with particularly strong effects on composition, richness and taxonomic and functional diversity. These relationships propagated to drive positive relationships between biodiversity and secondary production that were modified by scale, context-dependencies and anthropogenic modification. Finally, leveraging spatially-explicit descriptions of geophysical and biological properties, we uncovered distinct and nested spatial scales of biodiversity and secondary production, and suggest that multiple geophysical processes simultaneously influence these patterns at different scales. Together, our findings advance our understanding of relationships between the physical templet and patterns of BEF, and help to predict how perturbations to the Earth's surface may propagate to influence biodiversity and energy flux through food webs.
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