Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and MarineGEO program, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, 21037, USA.
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, 7001, Australia.
Nat Commun. 2021 Nov 25;12(1):6875. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27212-9.
Changing biodiversity alters ecosystem functioning in nature, but the degree to which this relationship depends on the taxonomic identities rather than the number of species remains untested at broad scales. Here, we partition the effects of declining species richness and changing community composition on fish community biomass across >3000 coral and rocky reef sites globally. We find that high biodiversity is 5.7x more important in maximizing biomass than the remaining influence of other ecological and environmental factors. Differences in fish community biomass across space are equally driven by both reductions in the total number of species and the disproportionate loss of larger-than-average species, which is exacerbated at sites impacted by humans. Our results confirm that sustaining biomass and associated ecosystem functions requires protecting diversity, most importantly of multiple large-bodied species in areas subject to strong human influences.
生物多样性的变化会改变自然界中生态系统的功能，但这种关系在多大程度上取决于分类学身份而不是物种数量，在广泛的范围内仍未得到检验。在这里，我们在全球 3000 多个珊瑚和岩石礁地点上，划分了物种丰富度下降和群落组成变化对鱼类群落生物量的影响。我们发现，高生物多样性比其他生态和环境因素的剩余影响更能使生物量最大化，高 5.7 倍。空间上鱼类群落生物量的差异同样受到物种总数减少和大于平均体型物种不成比例损失的驱动，而在受人类影响的地点，这种情况更为严重。我们的研究结果证实，维持生物量和相关生态系统功能需要保护多样性，最重要的是在受人类强烈影响的地区保护多种大型物种。
