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A universal scaling method for biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2019.
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Abstract
- SummaryGlobal biodiversity is declining at rates faster than at any other point in human history. Experimental manipulations of biodiversity at small spatial scales have demonstrated that communities with fewer species consistently produce less biomass than higher diversity communities. However, understanding how the global extinction crisis is likely to impact global ecosystem functioning will require applying these local and largely experimental findings to natural systems at substantially larger spatial and temporal scales. Here we propose that we can use two simple macroecological patterns – the species area curve and the biomass-area curve – to upscale the species richness-biomass relationship. We demonstrate that at local spatial scales, each additional species will contribute more to biomass production with increasing area sampled because the species-area curve saturates and the biomass-area curve increases monotonically. We use species-area and biomass-area curves from a Minnesota grassland and a Panamanian tropical dry forest to examine the species richness – biomass relationship at three and ten sampling extents, respectively. In both datasets, the observed relationship between biodiversity and biomass production at every sampling extent was predicted from simple species-area and biomass-area relationships. These findings suggest that macroecological patterns like the species-area curve underpin the scaling of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research and can be used to predict these relationships at the global scales where they are relevant for species loss.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests
Biomass (ecology)
Extinction
Ecology
Biodiversity
food and beverages
15. Life on land
complex mixtures
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
010601 ecology
Environmental science
Ecosystem
14. Life underwater
Species richness
Temporal scales
Global biodiversity
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....8f60b33f4e311defb0e31a2de865eb1b