Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Edited by Nils Chr. Stenseth, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, and approved January 15, 2021 (received for review September 14, 2020)
Significance
Identifying species assemblages that boost the provision of multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously (multifunctionality) is crucial to undertake effective restoration actions aiming at simultaneously promoting biodiversity and high multifunctionality in a changing world. By disentangling the effect of multiple traits on multifunctionality in a litter decomposition experiment, we show that it is possible to identify the assemblages that boost multifunctionality across multiple species mixtures originating from six biomes. We found that higher evenness among dissimilar species and the functional attributes of rare species as key biodiversity attributes to enhance multifunctionality and to reduce the abundance of plant pathogens. Our study identifies those species assemblages needed to simultaneously maximize multifunctionality and limit plant disease risks in natural and managed ecosystems.
Abstract
The functional traits of organisms within multispecies assemblages regulate biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning. Yet how traits should assemble to boost multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously (multifunctionality) remains poorly explored. In a multibiome litter experiment covering most of the global variation in leaf trait spectra, we showed that three dimensions of functional diversity (dispersion, rarity, and evenness) explained up to 66% of variations in multifunctionality, although the dominant species and their traits remained an important predictor. While high dispersion impeded multifunctionality, increasing the evenness among functionally dissimilar species was a key dimension to promote higher multifunctionality and to reduce the abundance of plant pathogens. Because too-dissimilar species could have negative effects on ecosystems, our results highlight the need for not only diverse but also functionally even assemblages to promote multifunctionality. The effect of functionally rare species strongly shifted from positive to negative depending on their trait differences with the dominant species. Simultaneously managing the dispersion, evenness, and rarity in multispecies assemblages could be used to design assemblages aimed at maximizing multifunctionality independently of the biome, the identity of dominant species, or the range of trait values considered. Functional evenness and rarity offer promise to improve the management of terrestrial ecosystems and to limit plant disease risks.
Footnotes
↵1Y.L.B.-P., N.G., H.S., and P.G.-P. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: yoann.pinguet{at}imbe.fr or pablo.garcia{at}ica.csic.es.
Author contributions: Y.L.B.-P., N.G., H.S., F.T.M., and P.G.-P. designed research; Y.L.B.-P., N.G., H.S., S.R., M.D., S.A., V.O., B.G., and P.G.-P. performed research; Y.L.B.-P., N.G., H.S., J.W., and P.G.-P. analyzed data; Y.L.B.-P., N.G., H.S., F.T.M., J.H.C.C., L.D., C.G., V.M., R.M., N.S., B.K.S., and P.G.-P. wrote the paper; N.G., J.H.C.C., L.D., C.G., V.M., R.M., N.S., and P.G.-P. provided biological material; and F.T.M. provided fundings.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2019355118/-/DCSupplemental.
Data Availability.
All data and R codes are available on Figshare: https://figshare.com/s/a73f2c4106b33f32e9c0.
Published under the PNAS license.
References
Log in using your username and password
Log in through your institution
You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.
If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.
Purchase access
You may purchase access to this article. This will require you to create an account if you don't already have one.
Functional rarity and evenness are key facets of biodiversity to boost multifunctionality
Article Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Ecology
Sign up for Article Alerts
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Jonathon Yuly, David Beratan, and Peng Zhang investigate how electron bifurcation reactions work.
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.