Local species diversity, β-diversity and climate influence the regional stability of bird biomass across North America

Catano, Christopher P.; Fristoe, Trevor S.; LaManna, Joseph A.; Myers, Jonathan A.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.2520

Cited by 28 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(162 reference statements)

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“…For decades ecologists have called for a better understanding of how scale shapes biodiversity patterns and the processes that create them (Wiens 1989, Levin 1992). Moreover, recent studies demonstrate that variation in biodiversity across scales is necessary for scaling ecosystem functioning and stability from local communities to larger, heterogeneous regions relevant to restoration and conservation planning (Catano et al 2020, Gonzalez et al 2020). As ecology continues to scale up, approaches that integrate SARs and experimental community assembly offer key opportunities to reveal the mechanisms underpinning the scaling of biodiversity, restoration outcomes, and responses to global change.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species pool size alters species–area relationships during experimental community assembly

Catano

Grman

Behrens

et al. 2020

Ecology

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The species pool concept has advanced our understanding for how biodiversity is coupled at local and regional scales. However, it remains unclear how species pool size, the number of species available to disperse to a site, influences community assembly across spatial scales. We provide one of the first studies that assesses diversity across scales after experimentally assembling grassland communities from species pools of different sizes. We show that species pool size causes scale‐dependent effects on diversity in grasslands undergoing restoration by altering the shape of the species–area relationship (SAR). Specifically, larger species pools increased the slope of the SAR, but not the intercept, suggesting that dispersal from a larger pool causes species to be more spatially aggregated. This increased aggregation appears to be caused by sampling effects due to fewer individuals arriving per species, rather than stronger species sorting across variation in soil moisture. These scale‐dependent effects suggest that studies evaluating species pools at a single, small scale may underestimate their effects, thereby contributing to uncertainty about the importance of regional processes for community assembly and their consequences for ecological restoration.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species pool size alters species–area relationships during experimental community assembly

Catano

Grman

Behrens

et al. 2020

Ecology

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“…Biological insurance theory has consistently emphasised differential responses of system components to environmental variations as the key mechanism underlying the stabilising effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning (McNaughton, 1977;Yachi & Loreau, 1999;Loreau, 2010). This mechanism is deeply rooted in biology since differential responses to environmental variations are ultimately based on the universal presence of trade-offs in biological systems, which constrain species to evolve towards a species-specific balance between various biological functions, and thus to perform best under a species-specific set of environmental conditions (Chesson, Pacala & Neuhauser, 2001). Differential environmental responses result in temporal complementarity between species at the community level (Loreau, 2000), which echoes the functional complementarity that underlies the effects of biodiversity on mean ecosystem functioning Cardinale et al, 2007).…”

Section: Insurance and Portfolio Theories In Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity as insurance: from concept to measurement and application

et al. 2021

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Biological insurance theory predicts that, in a variable environment, aggregate ecosystem properties will vary less in more diverse communities because declines in the performance or abundance of some species or phenotypes will be offset, at least partly, by smoother declines or increases in others. During the past two decades, ecology has accumulated strong evidence for the stabilising effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning. As biological insurance is reaching the stage of a mature theory, it is critical to revisit and clarify its conceptual foundations to guide future developments, applications and measurements. In this review, we first clarify the connections between the insurance and portfolio concepts that have been used in ecology and the economic concepts that inspired them. Doing so points to gaps and mismatches between ecology and economics that could be filled profitably by new theoretical developments and new management applications. Second, we discuss some fundamental issues in biological insurance theory that have remained unnoticed so far and that emerge from some of its recent applications. In particular, we draw a clear distinction between the two effects embedded in biological insurance theory, i.e. the effects of biodiversity on the mean and variability of ecosystem properties. This distinction allows explicit consideration of trade-offs between the mean and stability of ecosystem processes and services. We also review applications of biological insurance theory in ecosystem management. Finally, we provide a synthetic conceptual framework that unifies the various approaches across disciplines, and we suggest new ways in which biological insurance theory could be extended to address new issues in ecology and ecosystem management. Exciting future challenges include linking the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and stability, incorporating multiple functions and feedbacks, developing new approaches to partition biodiversity effects across scales, extending biological insurance theory to complex interaction networks, and developing new applications to biodiversity and ecosystem management.

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“…Based on long‐term records of bird populations across North America, two recent studies showed that avian species diversity may contribute to avian community stability at different scales (Catano et al., 2020; Mikkelson et al., 2011). At the local scale (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…a state of the United States), Catano et al. (2020) showed that spatial community dissimilarity (i.e. species turnover across space) was positively related to spatial asynchrony and stability of community biomass at larger scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Composition of ‘fast–slow’ traits drives avian community stability over North America

Zhang

et al. 2021

Functional Ecology

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Rapid biodiversity loss has triggered decades of research on the relationships between biodiversity and community stability. Recent studies highlighted the importance of species traits for understanding biodiversity–stability relationships. The species with high growth rates (‘fast’ species) are expected to be less resistant to environmental stress but recover faster if disturbed; in contrast, the species with slow growth rates (‘slow’ species) can be more resistant but recover more slowly if disturbed. Such a ‘fast–slow’ trait continuum provides a new perspective for understanding community stability, but its validity has mainly been examined in plant communities. Here, we investigate how ‘fast–slow’ trait composition, together with species richness and environmental factors, regulate avian community stability at a continental scale. We used bird population records from the North American Breeding Bird Survey during 1988–2017 and defined avian community stability as the temporal invariability of total community biomass. We calculated species richness and the community–weighted mean (CWM) and functional diversity (FD) of four key life‐history traits, including body size, nestling period (i.e. period of egg incubation and young bird fledging), life span and clutch size (i.e. annual total number of eggs). Environmental factors included temperature, precipitation and leaf area index (LAI). Our analyses showed that avian community stability was mainly driven by the CWM of the ‘fast–slow’ trait. Communities dominated by ‘fast’ species (i.e. species with small body size, short nestling period and life span and large clutch size) were more stable than those dominated by ‘slow’ species (i.e. species with large body size, long nestling period and life span and small clutch size). Species richness and the FD of the ‘fast–slow’ trait explained much smaller proportions of variation in avian community stability. Temperature had direct positive effects on avian community stability, while precipitation and leaf area index affected community stability indirectly by influencing species richness and trait composition. Our study demonstrates that composition of ‘fast–slow’ traits is the major biotic driver of avian community stability over North America. Temperature is the most important abiotic factor, but its effect is weaker than that of the ‘fast–slow’ trait. An integrated framework combining ‘fast–slow’ trait composition and temperature is needed to understand the response of avian communities in a changing environment. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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Local species diversity, β-diversity and climate influence the regional stability of bird biomass across North America

Cited by 28 publications

References 80 publications

Species pool size alters species–area relationships during experimental community assembly

Species pool size alters species–area relationships during experimental community assembly

Biodiversity as insurance: from concept to measurement and application

Composition of ‘fast–slow’ traits drives avian community stability over North America

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