• DOI:10.1038/nature19092
• Corpus ID: 4467709

Biodiversity at multiple trophic levels is needed for ecosystem multifunctionality

@article{Soliveres2016BiodiversityAM,
  title={Biodiversity at multiple trophic levels is needed for ecosystem multifunctionality},
  author={Santiago Soliveres and Fons Plas and Peter Manning and Daniele Prati and Martin M. Gossner and Swen C. Renner and Fabian Alt and Hartmut Arndt and Vanessa Baumgartner and Julia Binkenstein and Klaus Birkhofer and Stefan Blaser and Nico Bl{\"u}thgen and Steffen Boch and Stefan M. B{\"o}hm and Carmen B{\"o}rschig and François Buscot and Tim Diek{\"o}tter and Johannes Heinze and Norbert H{\"o}lzel and Kirsten Jung and Valentin H. Klaus and Till Kleinebecker and Sandra Klemmer and Jochen Krauss and Markus Lange and E Kathryn Morris and J{\"o}rg C M{\"u}ller and Yvonne Oelmann and J{\"o}rg Overmann and Esther Pa{\vs}ali{\'c} and Matthias C. Rillig and Hinrich Martin Schaefer and Michael Schloter and Barbara Schmitt and Ingo Sch{\"o}ning and Marion Schrumpf and Johannes Sikorski and Stephanie A. Socher and Emily F. Solly and Ilja Sonnemann and Elisabeth Sorkau and Juliane Steckel and Ingolf Steffan‐Dewenter and Barbara Stempfhuber and Marco Tschapka and Manfred T{\"u}rke and Paul Christiaan Venter and Christiane N Weiner and Wolfgang W. Weisser and Michael Werner and Catrin Westphal and Wolfgang Wilcke and Volkmar Wolters and Tesfaye Wubet and Susanne Wurst and Markus L. Fischer and Eric Allan},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2016},
  volume={536},
  pages={456-459}
}

• Santiago Soliveres, F. Plas, +55 authors E. Allan
• Published 17 August 2016
• Environmental Science
• Nature

Many experiments have shown that loss of biodiversity reduces the capacity of ecosystems to provide the multiple services on which humans depend. However, experiments necessarily simplify the complexity of natural ecosystems and will normally control for other important drivers of ecosystem functioning, such as the environment or land use. In addition, existing studies typically focus on the diversity of single trophic groups, neglecting the fact that biodiversity loss occurs across many taxa and that the functional effects of any trophic group may depend on the abundance and diversity of others. Here we report analysis of the relationships between the species richness and abundance of nine trophic groups, including 4,600 above- and below-ground taxa, and 14 ecosystem services and functions and with their simultaneous provision (or multifunctionality) in 150 grasslands. We show that high species richness in multiple trophic groups (multitrophic richness) had stronger positive effects on ecosystem services than richness in any individual trophic group; this includes plant species richness, the most widely used measure of biodiversity. On average, three trophic groups influenced each ecosystem service, with each trophic group influencing at least one service. Multitrophic richness was particularly beneficial for ‘regulating’ and ‘cultural’ services, and for multifunctionality, whereas a change in the total abundance of species or biomass in multiple trophic groups (the multitrophic abundance) positively affected supporting services. Multitrophic richness and abundance drove ecosystem functioning as strongly as abiotic conditions and land-use intensity, extending previous experimental results to real-world ecosystems. Primary producers, herbivorous insects and microbial decomposers seem to be particularly important drivers of ecosystem functioning, as shown by the strong and frequent positive associations of their richness or abundance with multiple ecosystem services. Our results show that multitrophic richness and abundance support ecosystem functioning, and demonstrate that a focus on single groups has led to researchers to greatly underestimate the functional importance of biodiversity.