Is long-term ecological functioning stable: The case of the marine benthos?

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that human activities are contributing to substantial biodiversity loss and that this threatens ecological processes underpinning human exploitation of 'ecosystem services' (defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as 'the benefits people obtain from ecosystems'). In the present study we consider three 'intermediate ecosystem services' in both contemporary and ancient marine systems and although 'ecosystem services' per se did not exist in the Jurassic our study seeks to consider the future provision of these services and so the term is retained. We consider the temporal patterns in benthic marine ecosystems:(1) spanning four decades at two offshore stations in the North Sea, UK and (2) over millennial scales in Late Jurassic UK palaeocommunities. Biological traits analysis is used to link changes in taxonomic composition to variations in ecological functioning and the potential supply of three 'intermediate' ecosystem services: the ability to provide food to fish and other predators, benthic nutrient regeneration and carbon cycling. We examine whether changes in taxonomic composition drive temporal variation in functioning, whether this variation increases over time and the extent to which species turnover is comparable in contemporary and ancient systems. Taxonomic variability was of a similar magnitude in all three systems and there was evidence for changes in functioning linked to changes in several (key or rivet) taxa. During other periods resilience maintained functioning in the face of taxonomic change. These results suggest that in these benthic systems the Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning relationship is idiosyncratic, but a degree of temporal stability in functioning is maintained such that the ecosystem services they underpin would also be stable during decadal and longer-term changes.

Relative Contributions of Biodiversity and Environment to Benthic Ecosystem Functioning

“…On the other hand, SI fluxes were similar to those at DDL and SoGC. A previous study reported no consistent changes in ecosystem function with changes in functional diversity (Frid and Caswell, 2015) and we also found consistent differences in benthic communities at our study sites but not in benthic flux rates. Therefore, the specific attributes of our study system provide an opportunity to evaluate the contribution of environmental variables and functional diversity to benthic flux variation.…”

Four decades of functional community change reveals gradual trends and low interlinkage across trophic groups in a large marine ecosystem

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study comparing long‐term trends and multi‐decadal dynamics in multiple dimensions of functional community change across trophic groups and areas. Previous trait‐based studies on long‐term functional community change have focused on single organism groups separately, either zoobenthos (Gogina, Darr, & Zettler, ; Neumann & Kröncke, ; Veríssimo et al, ; Weigel, Blenckner, & Bonsdorff, ) or fish (Baptista, Martinho, Nyjtrai, Pardal, & Dolbeth, ; Barcelo, Ciannelli, Olsen, Johannessen, & Knutsen, ; Dencker et al, ; Frelat et al, ), and particularly multi‐trait compositional changes on local scale (Clare, Robinson, & Frid, ; Frid & Caswell, ).…”

The Arctic Traits Database – a repository of Arctic benthic invertebrate traits

“…References Aller (1983), Bremner (2008), Bremner et al (2006), Costello et al (2015), Frid and Caswell (2016) predator An organism that feeds by preying on other organisms (e.g., starfish) FH6 parasite/commensal An organism that lives in or on another living organism (the host), from which it obtains food and other requirements Function Can indicate hydrodynamic conditions (suspension feeders in turbulent, deposit feeders in calmer water), carbon transport between pelagos and benthos (suspension feeders) and backwards (predators) and vulnerability (e.g., surface deposit feeders and suspension feeders are more sensitive to trawling). Impacts resource utilization and facilitation (e.g., deposit feeders facilitate microbes that further decompose organic carbon).…”

“…Bolam et al (2014),Bremner et al (2008),Frid and Caswell (2016),Törnroos and Bonsdorff (2012) used -alongside substratum affinity -for habitat classification. Can depict depth distribution of other traits.…”