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Consistent effects of biodiversity loss on multifunctionality across contrasting ecosystems

Abstract

Understanding how loss of biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning, and thus the delivery of ecosystem goods and services, has become increasingly necessary in a changing world. Considerable recent attention has focused on predicting how biodiversity loss simultaneously impacts multiple ecosystem functions (that is, ecosystem multifunctionality), but the ways in which these effects vary across ecosystems remain unclear. Here, we report the results of two 19-year plant diversity manipulation experiments, each established across a strong environmental gradient. Although the effects of plant and associated fungal diversity loss on individual functions frequently differed among ecosystems, the consequences of biodiversity loss for multifunctionality were relatively invariant. However, the context-dependency of biodiversity effects also worked in opposing directions for different individual functions, meaning that similar multifunctionality values across contrasting ecosystems could potentially mask important differences in the effects of biodiversity on functioning among ecosystems. Our findings highlight that an understanding of the relative contribution of species or functional groups to individual ecosystem functions among contrasting ecosystems and their interactions (that is, complementarity versus competition) is critical for guiding management efforts aimed at maintaining ecosystem multifunctionality and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services.

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Fig. 1: Influence of plant species and functional group removals on individual ecosystem functions.
Fig. 2: Influence of plant species and functional group removals on ecosystem multifunctionality.
Fig. 3: Effects of plant removals on fungal community structure and diversity.
Fig. 4: Relationship between fungal species richness and ecosystem multifunctionality.
Fig. 5: Importance of biodiversity and island size class (that is, environmental context) on 15 individual ecosystem functions and overall ecosystem multifunctionality, as revealed by variance partitioning analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We thank numerous assistants for help in the field and laboratory. We also thank B. Lindahl and K. Clemmensen for guidance on the fungal component of the work and helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was supported by grants to D.A.W. from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and a Wallenberg Scholars award.

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D.A.W. acquired the necessary funding and designed the experiment. N.F., D.A.W., P.K., M.J.G., M.-C.N., M.F., M.C. and J.A.B. collected and analysed the data. N.F. wrote the first draft of the manuscript with substantial improvements by D.A.W. and P.K. All authors contributed to manuscript completion and revision.

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Correspondence to Nicolas Fanin.

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Fanin, N., Gundale, M.J., Farrell, M. et al. Consistent effects of biodiversity loss on multifunctionality across contrasting ecosystems. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 269–278 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0415-0

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