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Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of trophic groups and ecosystems

Nature volume 443, pages 989–992 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Over the past decade, accelerating rates of species extinction have prompted an increasing number of studies to reduce species diversity experimentally and examine how this alters the efficiency by which communities capture resources and convert those into biomass1,2. So far, the generality of patterns and processes observed in individual studies have been the subjects of considerable debate3,4,5,6,7. Here we present a formal meta-analysis of studies that have experimentally manipulated species diversity to examine how it affects the functioning of numerous trophic groups in multiple types of ecosystem. We show that the average effect of decreasing species richness is to decrease the abundance or biomass of the focal trophic group, leading to less complete depletion of resources used by that group. At the same time, analyses reveal that the standing stock of, and resource depletion by, the most species-rich polyculture tends to be no different from that of the single most productive species used in an experiment. Of the known mechanisms that might explain these trends, results are most consistent with what is called the ‘sampling effect’, which occurs when diverse communities are more likely to contain and become dominated by the most productive species. Whether this mechanism is widespread in natural communities is currently controversial. Patterns we report are remarkably consistent for four different trophic groups (producers, herbivores, detritivores and predators) and two major ecosystem types (aquatic and terrestrial). Collectively, our analyses suggest that the average species loss does indeed affect the functioning of a wide variety of organisms and ecosystems, but the magnitude of these effects is ultimately determined by the identity of species that are going extinct.

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Figure 1: Effects of species richness on the standing stock abundance or biomass of trophic group t , and the depletion of resources consumed by t.
Figure 2: The general form of the diversity–function relationship.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Gaines, H. Hillebrand, M. Huston, J. Hille Ris-Lambers, J. Levine, J. Melack, B. Starzomski, D. Tilman and D. Wardle for comments that improved this manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation and is a product of the BioMERGE diversity-synthesis network.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA

    Bradley J. Cardinale

  2. Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Diane S. Srivastava

  3. Virginia Institute of Marine Science, The College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, Virginia, 23062, USA

    J. Emmett Duffy

  4. Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 27708, USA

    Justin P. Wright

  5. Department of Zoology, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, 43015, USA

    Amy L. Downing

  6. Institute of Integrative & Comparative Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Mahesh Sankaran

  7. Comparative Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT

    Mahesh Sankaran

  8. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, New York, 10027, USA

    Claire Jouseau

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  1. Bradley J. Cardinale
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Correspondence to Bradley J. Cardinale.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Notes

Summary of studies reviewed and selected for meta-analysis. (DOC 155 kb)

Supplementary Data

Dataset used for meta-analysis. (XLS 175 kb)

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Cardinale, B., Srivastava, D., Emmett Duffy, J. et al. Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of trophic groups and ecosystems. Nature 443, 989–992 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05202

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