Year: 2016
Type: review
Abstract: Understanding the consequences of species loss in complex ecological communities is one of the great challenges in current biodiversity research. For a long time, this topic has been addressed by traditional biodiversity experiments. Most of these approaches treat species as trait-free, taxonomic units characterizing communities only by species number without accounting for species traits. However, extinctions do not occur at random as there is a clear correlation between extinction risk and species traits. In this review, we assume that large species will be most threatened by extinction and use novel allometric and size-spectrum concepts that include body mass as a primary species trait at the levels of populations and individuals, respectively, to re-assess three classic debates on the relationships between biodiversity and (i) food-web structural complexity, (ii) community dynamic stability, and (iii) ecosystem functioning. Contrasting current expectations, size-structured approaches suggest that the loss of large species, that typically exploit most resource species, may lead to future food webs that are less interwoven and more structured by chains of interactions and compartments. The disruption of natural body-mass distributions maintaining food-web stability may trigger avalanches of secondary extinctions and strong trophic cascades with expected knock-on effects on the functionality of the ecosystems. Therefore, we argue that it is crucial to take into account body size as a species trait when analysing the consequences of biodiversity loss for natural ecosystems. Applying size-structured approaches provides an integrative ecological concept that enables a better understanding of each species' unique role across communities and the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss.
DOI: 10.1111/brv.12250
Institutions: German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, University of Tasmania, Centre for Marine Socioecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Linköping University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Station d’Écologie Théorique et Expérimentale, University of Copenhagen, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Göttingen, Technical University of Denmark, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Åbo Akademi University, Imperial College London, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Institut d'écologie et des sciences de l'environnement de Paris, Université Paris Diderot, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Universität Hamburg
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: bronze
Funders: Villum Fonden, European Science Foundation, National Research Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Danmarks Grundforskningsfond, Deutsches Zentrum für integrative Biodiversitätsforschung Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Natural Environment Research Council, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, Center for Makroøkologi, Evolution og Klima
Awards: G1567068457, Impacts of global warming in sentinel systems: from genes to ecosystems, G4617990, Impacts of habitat fragmentation in a warming world, Using individual metabolism and body size to predict climate warming impacts on aquatic food webs, G5632166549, Using individual metabolism and body size to predict climate warming impacts on aquatic food webs, SeaDNA - Assessing marine biodiversity and structure using environmental DNA: from groundtruthing to food web structure and stability
OpenAlex ID: W2236673748