Functional Redundancy Instead of Species Redundancy Determines Community Stability in a Typical Steppe of Inner Mongolia

Kang, Sangmok; Ma, Weiqiang; Li, Frank Y.; Zhang, Qing; Niu, Jianming; Ding, Yulong; Han, Fang; Sun, Xiaoxin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0145605

Cited by 46 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Diversity of microbial communities is likely to play a major role in health as substantial functional redundancy exists amongst taxonomically distinct microbiota; that is, the microbial constituents of these open ecosystems can share similar functional roles [42]. In accordance with the redundancy hypothesis, this enables asynchronous responses during perturbation or disturbance, which helps to maintain system stability [43].…”

Section: Dysbiosis-'life In Distress'mentioning

confidence: 90%

Walking Ecosystems in Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure: An Ecological Perspective on Enhancing Personal and Planetary Health

2018

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Principles of ecology apply at myriad scales, including within the human body and the intertwined macro and microscopic ecosystems that we depend upon for survival. The conceptual principles of dysbiosis (‘life in distress’) also apply to different realms of life—our microbiome, the macro environment and the socioeconomic domain. Viewing the human body as a holobiont—a host plus billions of microbial organisms working symbiotically to form a functioning ecological unit—has the potential to enhance personal and planetary health. We discuss this ecological perspective in our paper. We also discuss the proposals to rewild the microbiome, innovative microbiome-inspired green infrastructure (MIGI) and the basis of prescribing ‘doses of nature’. Particular emphasis is given to MIGI—a collective term for the design and management of innovative living urban features that could potentially enhance public health via health-inducing microbial interactions. This concept builds upon the microbiome rewilding hypothesis. Mounting evidence points to the importance of microbial diversity in maintaining favorable health. Moreover, connecting with nature—both physically and psychologically–has been shown to enhance our health and wellbeing. However, we still need to understand the underlying mechanisms, and optimal types and levels of exposure. This paper adds to other recent calls for the inclusion of the environment-microbiome-health axis in nature–human health research. Recognizing that all forms of life—both the seen and the unseen—are in some way connected (ecologically, socially, evolutionarily), paves the way to valuing reciprocity in the nature–human relationship. It is with a holistic and symbiotic perspective that we can begin to integrate strategies and address connected issues of human and environmental health. The prospective strategies discussed in our paper focus on enhancing our connections with the natural world, and ultimately aim to help address the global challenge of halting and reversing dysbiosis in all its manifestations.

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Section: Dysbiosis-'life In Distress'mentioning

confidence: 90%

Walking Ecosystems in Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure: An Ecological Perspective on Enhancing Personal and Planetary Health

2018

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“…Two communities with equal number of species but different in composition might differ significantly in PD and FD (Petchey andGaston 2006, Safi et al 2011) due to different levels of functional redundancy (FR) (Petchey et al 2007), different evolutionary histories, and/or different environmental disturbances. The loss of functionally unique species may result in a disproportional loss of function from a given ecosystem (Walker 1992, Elmqvist et al 2003, while functional redundancy maintains system stability during disturbance (Naeem 1998, Gonzalez and Loreau 2009, Kang et al 2015. Nevertheless, a link between FD and PD would be expected if the functional traits that allow species to persist in the environment are evolutionarily conserved, that is to say, they display phylogenetic signals (Safi et al 2011, Cadotte et al 2012, Miller et al 2017.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defaunation and fragmentation erode small mammal diversity dimensions in tropical forests

et al. 2018

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Forest fragmentation and defaunation are considered the main drivers of biodiversity loss, yet the synergistic effects of landscape changes and biotic interactions on assemblage structure have been poorly investigated. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 283 assemblages and 105 species of small mammals to understand how defaunation of medium and large mammals and forest fragmentation change the community composition and diversity of rodents and marsupials in tropical forests of South America. We used structured equation models to investigate the relationship between small mammal species, functional and phylogenetic diversity with forest size, forest cover and the occurrence of medium and large mammals. The best‐fit model showed that defaunation reduced functional diversity, and that species diversity of small mammals increased with forest patch size. Forest cover did not affect functional and phylogenetic diversity. Our results indicate that occurrence of medium and large sized mammals (probably acting as predators, or competitors of small mammals) and forest patch size help to retain species and functional diversity in small mammal communities. Further, the number of species in a small mammal community was critical to the maintenance of phylogenetic diversity, and may have a pronounced influence on the ecological functions played by small mammals. Identifying how phylogenetic and functional diversity change in function of human pressures allows us to better understand the contribution of extant lineages to ecosystem functioning in tropical forests.

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“…Niche theory predicts that each species would have a unique position along environmental gradients. However, it fails to account that some vegetation types have many species that fulfill the same (or very similar) functional role within the plant communities (Kang et al., 2015) hence the functional role of those species in a plant community is considered redundant (Walker, 1992). This means that floristically distinct communities may occur in similar positions along ecological gradients in the landscape.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of ecological redundancy on the performance of machine learning classifiers in vegetation mapping

MacIntyre

Niekerk

Dobrowolski

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

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Vegetation maps are models of the real vegetation patterns and are considered important tools in conservation and management planning. Maps created through traditional methods can be expensive and time‐consuming, thus, new more efficient approaches are needed. The prediction of vegetation patterns using machine learning shows promise, but many factors may impact on its performance. One important factor is the nature of the vegetation–environment relationship assessed and ecological redundancy. We used two datasets with known ecological redundancy levels (strength of the vegetation–environment relationship) to evaluate the performance of four machine learning (ML) classifiers (classification trees, random forests, support vector machines, and nearest neighbor). These models used climatic and soil variables as environmental predictors with pretreatment of the datasets (principal component analysis and feature selection) and involved three spatial scales. We show that the ML classifiers produced more reliable results in regions where the vegetation–environment relationship is stronger as opposed to regions characterized by redundant vegetation patterns. The pretreatment of datasets and reduction in prediction scale had a substantial influence on the predictive performance of the classifiers. The use of ML classifiers to create potential vegetation maps shows promise as a more efficient way of vegetation modeling. The difference in performance between areas with poorly versus well‐structured vegetation–environment relationships shows that some level of understanding of the ecology of the target region is required prior to their application. Even in areas with poorly structured vegetation–environment relationships, it is possible to improve classifier performance by either pretreating the dataset or reducing the spatial scale of the predictions.

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Functional Redundancy Instead of Species Redundancy Determines Community Stability in a Typical Steppe of Inner Mongolia

Cited by 46 publications

References 39 publications

Walking Ecosystems in Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure: An Ecological Perspective on Enhancing Personal and Planetary Health

Walking Ecosystems in Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure: An Ecological Perspective on Enhancing Personal and Planetary Health

Defaunation and fragmentation erode small mammal diversity dimensions in tropical forests

Impact of ecological redundancy on the performance of machine learning classifiers in vegetation mapping

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