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Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2021

Scaling up biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships: the role of environmental heterogeneity in space and time

Thompson, Patrick L.; Kefi, Sonia; Zelnik, Yuval R.; Dee, Laura E.; Wang, Shaopeng; de Mazancourt, Claire; Loreau, Michel; Gonzalez, Andrew

Abstract

The biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationship is expected to be scale-dependent. The autocorrelation of environmental heterogeneity is hypothesized to explain this scale dependence because it influences how quickly biodiversity accumulates over space or time. However, this link has yet to be demonstrated in a formal model. Here, we use a Lotka-Volterra competition model to simulate community dynamics when environmental conditions vary across either space or time. Species differ in their optimal environmental conditions, which results in turnover in community composition. We vary biodiversity by modelling communities with different sized regional species pools and ask how the amount of biomass per unit area depends on the number of species present, and the spatial or temporal scale at which it is measured. We find that more biodiversity is required to maintain functioning at larger temporal and spatial scales. The number of species required increases quickly when environmental autocorrelation is low, and slowly when autocorrelation is high. Both spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity lead to scale dependence in BEF, but autocorrelation has larger impacts when environmental change is temporal. These findings show how the biodiversity required to maintain functioning is expected to increase over space and time.

Keywords

environmental autocorrelation; biodiversity–ecosystem functioning; beta diversity; competition; complementarity

Published in

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
2021, Volume: 288, number: 1946, article number: 20202779
Publisher: ROYAL SOC

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Ecology

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.2779

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/111509