Functional trait effects on ecosystem stability: assembling the jigsaw puzzle

Abstract

Under global change, how biological diversity and ecosystem services are maintained in time is a fundamental question. Ecologists have long argued about multiple mechanisms by which local biodiversity might control the temporal stability of ecosystem properties. Accumulating theories and empirical evidence suggest that, together with different population and community parameters, these mechanisms largely operate through differences in functional traits among organisms. We review potential trait-stability mechanisms together with underlying tests and associated metrics. We identify various trait-based components, each accounting for different stability mechanisms, that contribute to buffering, or propagating, the effect of environmental fluctuations on ecosystem functioning. This comprehensive picture, obtained by combining different puzzle pieces of trait-stability effects, will guide future empirical and modeling investigations. Biotic mechanisms of stability: a jigsaw puzzleAs biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, a particularly urgent scientific challenge is to understand and predict the consequences of biodiversity loss on multiple ecosystem functions [1][2][3]. Temporal stability of the functioning of ecosystems is critical to both intrinsic and human purposes (Box 1, Figure 1). Temporal stability can be defined as the ability of a system to maintain, through time, multiple ecosystem properties (see Glossary) in relation to reference conditions. Key elements of stability (Box 1 and Figure 1) are, for example, inter-annual constancy in ecosystem properties, but also resistance and recovery from environmental change and perturbation. Stability is maintained by populations, communities, and ecosystems that can buffer the effects of environmental variation, thus retaining ecosystem functions such as productivity, carbon sequestration, pollination, etc. The idea that greater biodiversity stabilizes natural communities and ecosystems (i.e., diversity begets stability [4,5]) has led to a longrunning debate on the relationship between species diversity and stability [6,7].

Structure and Connectivity of Hydrothermal Vent Communities Along the Mid-Ocean Ridges in the West Indian Ocean: A Review

“…The biological characteristics of species such as size, mobility, trophic mode, and body structure robustness are more ecologically informative than taxonomic rank alone (Faith, 2015;Gross et al, 2017;Biggs et al, 2020;de Bello et al, 2021). Thus, functional traits approaches are valuable to assess the resilience and recoverability of vent communities to various natural or anthropogenic disturbances.…”

Functional traits trade-offs define plant population stability worldwide

“…First, for each plot we quantified the inter-annual variability in the size of each species' population using the coefficient of variation (CV) of abundance over time, i.e. the standard deviation of species abundance over mean species abundance (Májeková et al, 2014;de Bello et al, 2021).…”

Biodiversity mitigates trade-offs among multiple ecosystem services

“…The knowledge that similar traits can underpin two different services are important to fully understand bundles of ES and how to manage them. This highlights the importance of traits selected for the outcome of analysis linking traits to services (Mace et al 2012, de Bello et al 2021.,…”

“…Such an approach would unveil in detail the dominant trait-and community-based mechanisms driving shifts in ecosystem service provisioning in real-world high-diversity plant communities pressurized by environmental changes. Finally, higher diversity also increases the possibility for higher trait diversity that would more efficiently counteract perturbations, altogether reflecting the links between species diversity and functional redundancy in the community (de Bello et al 2021).…”