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Regional zooplankton biodiversity provides limited buffering of pond ecosystems against climate change.
J Anim Ecol. 2012 Jan; 81(1):251-9
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04 Jul 2012
Confirmation, Good for Teaching, New Finding
DOI: 10.3410/f.717547900.793002900
Understanding how human perturbations will alter biodiversity and, hence, ecosystem functioning is a priority for ecologists. In this fine paper, Thompson and Shurin experimentally tested the predictions from the spatial insurance hypothesis proposed by Loreau et al. {1} and suggest that the ability of the regional pool to compensate for the loss or decline of species more susceptible to stress would be limited to certain functions. What I liked most about this study was the attempt to simulate realistic scenarios of species loss caused by interacting stressors and colonization from the regional species pool. A local freshwater zooplankton community was exposed to warming and enhanced salinity and, in order to assess the relevance of dispersal, it was either inoculated or not with a mix of species collected from a number of lakes and ponds occurring in the area (intended to encompass regional biodiversity). The findings most worthy of being stressed are that: 1) the addition of regional taxa had little effect on compositional changes of the local community due to enhanced salinity, while it regulated warming effects, likely through the introductions of heat-tolerant species; 2) the buffering capacity of regional diversity vanished when stressors interacted to depress zooplankton biomass; 3) dispersal dampened the effects of warming on summer ecosystem productivity, but not those on periphyton growth (two out of the five functioning measures taken into account that were altered by environmental stressors).
In summary, regional biodiversity could enhance ecosystem resistance to environmental changes and, although such an effect seems not to be universal across ecosystem functions, dispersal appears as the key for the maintenance of functions under novel conditions. This study should further stimulate biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research to include stressors acting across a hierarchy of spatial scales, from local to global.
References
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Biodiversity as spatial insurance in heterogeneous landscapes.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2003 Oct 28; 100(22): 12765-70
PMID: 14569008 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2235465100
Disclosures
None declared
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Bulleri F: F1000Prime Recommendation of [Thompson PL and Shurin JB, J Anim Ecol 2012, 81(1):251-9]. In F1000Prime, 04 Jul 2012; DOI: 10.3410/f.717547900.793002900. F1000Prime.com/717547900#eval793002900
F1000Prime Recommendations, Dissents and Comments for [Thompson PL and Shurin JB, J Anim Ecol 2012, 81(1):251-9]. In F1000Prime, 19 Jun 2013; F1000Prime.com/717547900
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1. Climate change and other human-driven environmental perturbations are causing reductions in biodiversity and impacting the functioning of ecosystems on a global scale. Metacommunity theory suggests that ecosystem connectivity may reduce the magnitude of these impacts if the regional species pool contains functionally redundant species that differ in their environmental tolerances. Dispersal may increase the resistance of local ecosystems to environmental stress by providing regional species with traits adapted to novel conditions. 2. We tested this theory by subjecting freshwater zooplankton communities in mesocosms that were either connected to or isolated from the larger regional species pool to a factorial manipulation of experimental warming and increased salinity. 3. Compensation by regional taxa depended on the source of stress. Warming tolerant regional taxa partially compensated for reductions in heat sensitive local taxa but similar compensation did not occur under increased salinity. 4. Dispersal-mediated species invasions dampened the effects of warming on summer net ecosystem productivity. However, this buffering effect did not occur in the fall or for periphyton growth, the only other ecosystem function affected by the stress treatments. 5. The results indicate that regional biodiversity can provide insurance in a dynamic environment but that the buffering capacity is limited to some ecosystem processes and sources of stress. Maintaining regional biodiversity and habitat connectivity may therefore provide some limited insurance for local ecosystems in changing environments, but is unable to impart resistance against all sources of environmental stress.
© 2011 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology © 2011 British Ecological Society.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01908.x
PMID: 21950456
