Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
Depeartment of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 Mar 11;12(1):1586. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21824-x.
Human-driven threats are changing biodiversity, impacting ecosystem services. The loss of one species can trigger secondary extinctions of additional species, because species interact-yet the consequences of these secondary extinctions for services remain underexplored. Herein, we compare robustness of food webs and the ecosystem services (hereafter 'services') they provide; and investigate factors determining service responses to secondary extinctions. Simulating twelve extinction scenarios for estuarine food webs with seven services, we find that food web and service robustness are highly correlated, but that robustness varies across services depending on their trophic level and redundancy. Further, we find that species providing services do not play a critical role in stabilizing food webs - whereas species playing supporting roles in services through interactions are critical to the robustness of both food webs and services. Together, our results reveal indirect risks to services through secondary species losses and predictable differences in vulnerability across services.
人为驱动的威胁正在改变生物多样性，影响生态系统服务。一个物种的消失会引发其他物种的次生灭绝，因为物种相互作用——但这些次生灭绝对服务的影响仍未得到充分探索。在此，我们比较了食物网的稳健性及其提供的生态系统服务（以下简称“服务”）；并研究了决定服务对次生灭绝反应的因素。通过模拟 12 种河口食物网的灭绝情景和 7 种服务，我们发现食物网和服务的稳健性高度相关，但由于服务的营养水平和冗余性不同，稳健性在服务之间存在差异。此外，我们发现提供服务的物种在稳定食物网方面并不起关键作用——而在服务中通过相互作用发挥支持作用的物种对食物网和服务的稳健性都至关重要。总之，我们的研究结果揭示了通过次生物种损失对服务产生的间接风险，以及服务之间脆弱性的可预测差异。
