Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton Waterfront Campus, European Way, Southampton. SO14 3ZH, UK.
Cefas Laboratory, Pakefield Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk, NR33 0HT, UK.
Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 3;7:43695. doi: 10.1038/srep43695.
Consensus has been reached that global biodiversity loss impairs ecosystem functioning and the sustainability of services beneficial to humanity. However, the ecosystem consequences of extinction in natural communities are moderated by compensatory species dynamics, yet these processes are rarely accounted for in impact assessments and seldom considered in conservation programmes. Here, we use marine invertebrate communities to parameterise numerical models of sediment bioturbation - a key mediator of biogeochemical cycling - to determine whether post-extinction compensatory mechanisms alter biodiversity-ecosystem function relations following non-random extinctions. We find that compensatory dynamics lead to trajectories of sediment mixing that diverge from those without compensation, and that the form, magnitude and variance of each probabilistic distribution is highly influenced by the type of compensation and the functional composition of surviving species. Our findings indicate that the generalized biodiversity-function relation curve, as derived from multiple empirical investigations of random species loss, is unlikely to yield representative predictions for ecosystem properties in natural systems because the influence of post-extinction community dynamics are under-represented. Recognition of this problem is fundamental to management and conservation efforts, and will be necessary to ensure future plans and adaptation strategies minimize the adverse impacts of the biodiversity crisis.
已经达成共识，全球生物多样性的丧失损害了生态系统功能和有益于人类的服务的可持续性。然而，自然群落中物种灭绝的生态后果受到补偿物种动态的调节，但这些过程在影响评估中很少被考虑，在保护计划中也很少被考虑。在这里，我们使用海洋无脊椎动物群落来参数化沉积物生物扰动的数值模型——这是生物地球化学循环的关键介导者——以确定灭绝后补偿机制是否会改变非随机灭绝后生物多样性与生态系统功能的关系。我们发现，补偿动态导致沉积物混合的轨迹与没有补偿的轨迹不同，并且每个概率分布的形式、幅度和方差都受到补偿类型和幸存物种功能组成的高度影响。我们的研究结果表明，由于对随机物种损失的多次实证调查得出的广义生物多样性-功能关系曲线不太可能对自然系统中生态系统特性产生代表性预测，因为对灭绝后群落动态的影响被低估了。认识到这个问题对于管理和保护工作至关重要，并且有必要确保未来的计划和适应战略将生物多样性危机的不利影响降到最低。
