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Suding KN, Collins CG, Hallett LM, Larios L, Brigham LM, Dudney J, Farrer EC, Larson JE, Shackelford N, Spasojevic MJ. Biodiversity in changing environments: An external-driver internal-topology framework to guide intervention. Ecology 2024; 105:e4322. [PMID: 39014865 DOI: 10.1002/ecy.4322] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2023] [Revised: 01/15/2024] [Accepted: 03/08/2024] [Indexed: 07/18/2024]
Abstract
Accompanying the climate crisis is the more enigmatic biodiversity crisis. Rapid reorganization of biodiversity due to global environmental change has defied prediction and tested the basic tenets of conservation and restoration. Conceptual and practical innovation is needed to support decision making in the face of these unprecedented shifts. Critical questions include: How can we generalize biodiversity change at the community level? When are systems able to reorganize and maintain integrity, and when does abiotic change result in collapse or restructuring? How does this understanding provide a template to guide when and how to intervene in conservation and restoration? To this end, we frame changes in community organization as the modulation of external abiotic drivers on the internal topology of species interactions, using plant-plant interactions in terrestrial communities as a starting point. We then explore how this framing can help translate available data on species abundance and trait distributions to corresponding decisions in management. Given the expectation that community response and reorganization are highly complex, the external-driver internal-topology (EDIT) framework offers a way to capture general patterns of biodiversity that can help guide resilience and adaptation in changing environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katharine N Suding
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Courtney G Collins
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Biodiversity Research Centre, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Lauren M Hallett
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Department of Biology and Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
| | - Loralee Larios
- Department of Botany & Plant Sciences, University of California Riverside, Riverside, California, USA
| | - Laurel M Brigham
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
| | - Joan Dudney
- Environmental Studies Program, Santa Barbara, California, USA
- Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA
| | - Emily C Farrer
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
| | - Julie E Larson
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- USDA Agricultural Research Service, Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center, Burns, Oregon, USA
| | - Nancy Shackelford
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Marko J Spasojevic
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, University of California Riverside, Riverside, California, USA
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2
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Yang Y, Foster KR, Coyte KZ, Li A. Time delays modulate the stability of complex ecosystems. Nat Ecol Evol 2023; 7:1610-1619. [PMID: 37592022 PMCID: PMC10555844 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02158-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2023] [Accepted: 07/13/2023] [Indexed: 08/19/2023]
Abstract
What drives the stability, or instability, of complex ecosystems? This question sits at the heart of community ecology and has motivated a large body of theoretical work exploring how community properties shape ecosystem dynamics. However, the overwhelming majority of current theory assumes that species interactions are instantaneous, meaning that changes in the abundance of one species will lead to immediate changes in the abundances of its partners. In practice, time delays in how species respond to one another are widespread across ecological contexts, yet the impact of these delays on ecosystems remains unclear. Here we derive a new body of theory to comprehensively study the impact of time delays on ecological stability. We find that time delays are important for ecosystem stability. Large delays are typically destabilizing but, surprisingly, short delays can substantially increase community stability. Moreover, in stark contrast to delay-free systems, delays dictate that communities with more abundant species can be less stable than ones with less abundant species. Finally, we show that delays fundamentally shift how species interactions impact ecosystem stability, with communities of mixed interaction types becoming the most stable class of ecosystem. Our work demonstrates that time delays can be critical for the stability of complex ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuguang Yang
- Center for Systems and Control, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Kevin R Foster
- Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Katharine Z Coyte
- Division of Evolution and Genomic Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
| | - Aming Li
- Center for Systems and Control, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China.
- Center for Multi-Agent Research, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China.
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3
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DeSiervo MH, Sullivan LL, Kahan LM, Seabloom EW, Shoemaker LG. Disturbance alters transience but nutrients determine equilibria during grassland succession with multiple global change drivers. Ecol Lett 2023. [PMID: 37125464 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14229] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2022] [Accepted: 02/15/2023] [Indexed: 05/02/2023]
Abstract
Disturbance and environmental change may cause communities to converge on a steady state, diverge towards multiple alternative states or remain in long-term transience. Yet, empirical investigations of successional trajectories are rare, especially in systems experiencing multiple concurrent anthropogenic drivers of change. We examined succession in old field grassland communities subjected to disturbance and nitrogen fertilization using data from a long-term (22-year) experiment. Regardless of initial disturbance, after a decade communities converged on steady states largely determined by resource availability, where species turnover declined as communities approached dynamic equilibria. Species favoured by the disturbance were those that eventually came to dominate the highly fertilized plots. Furthermore, disturbance made successional pathways more direct revealing an important interaction effect between nutrients and disturbance as drivers of community change. Our results underscore the dynamical nature of grassland and old field succession, demonstrating how community properties such as β $$ \beta $$ diversity change through transient and equilibrium states.
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4
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Changes in the functional diversity of modern bird species over the last million years. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2201945119. [PMID: 36745783 PMCID: PMC9963860 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2201945119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Despite evidence of declining biosphere integrity, we currently lack understanding of how the functional diversity associated with changes in abundance among ecological communities has varied over time and before widespread human disturbances. We combine morphological, ecological, and life-history trait data for >260 extant bird species with genomic-based estimates of changing effective population size (Ne) to quantify demographic-based shifts in avian functional diversity over the past million years and under pre-anthropogenic climate warming. We show that functional diversity was relatively stable over this period, but underwent significant changes in some key areas of trait space due to changing species abundances. Our results suggest that patterns of population decline over the Pleistocene have been concentrated in particular regions of trait space associated with extreme reproductive strategies and low dispersal ability, consistent with an overall erosion of functional diversity. Further, species most sensitive to climate warming occupied a relatively narrow region of functional space, indicating that the largest potential population increases and decreases under climate change will occur among species with relatively similar trait sets. Overall, our results identify fluctuations in functional space of extant species over evolutionary timescales and represent the demographic-based vulnerability of different regions of functional space among these taxa. The integration of paleodemographic dynamics with functional trait data enhances our ability to quantify losses of biosphere integrity before anthropogenic disturbances and attribute contemporary biodiversity loss to different drivers over time.
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5
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Collins CG, Elmendorf SC, Smith JG, Shoemaker L, Szojka M, Swift M, Suding KN. Global change re-structures alpine plant communities through interacting abiotic and biotic effects. Ecol Lett 2022; 25:1813-1826. [PMID: 35763598 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14060] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/03/2022] [Revised: 01/31/2022] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Global change is altering patterns of community assembly, with net outcomes dependent on species' responses to the abiotic environment, both directly and mediated through biotic interactions. Here, we assess alpine plant community responses in a 15-year factorial nitrogen addition, warming and snow manipulation experiment. We used a dynamic competition model to estimate the density-dependent and -independent processes underlying changes in species-group abundances over time. Density-dependent shifts in competitive interactions drove long-term changes in abundance of species-groups under global change while counteracting environmental drivers limited the growth response of the dominant species through density-independent mechanisms. Furthermore, competitive interactions shifted with the environment, primarily with nitrogen and drove non-linear abundance responses across environmental gradients. Our results highlight that global change can either reshuffle species hierarchies or further favour already-dominant species; predicting which outcome will occur requires incorporating both density-dependent and -independent mechanisms and how they interact across multiple global change factors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Courtney G Collins
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.,Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Sarah C Elmendorf
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Jane G Smith
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Lauren Shoemaker
- Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA
| | - Megan Szojka
- Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA
| | - Margaret Swift
- Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Katharine N Suding
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
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6
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Schmid M, Paniw M, Postuma M, Ozgul A, Guillaume F. A tradeoff between robustness to environmental fluctuations and speed of evolution. Am Nat 2022; 200:E16-E35. [DOI: 10.1086/719654] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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7
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Shoemaker LG, Hallett LM, Zhao L, Reuman DC, Wang S, Cottingham KL, Hobbs RJ, Castorani MCN, Downing AL, Dudney JC, Fey SB, Gherardi LA, Lany N, Portales-Reyes C, Rypel AL, Sheppard LW, Walter JA, Suding KN. The long and the short of it: Mechanisms of synchronous and compensatory dynamics across temporal scales. Ecology 2022; 103:e3650. [PMID: 35112356 PMCID: PMC9285558 DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3650] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2021] [Accepted: 09/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
Synchronous dynamics (fluctuations that occur in unison) are universal phenomena with widespread implications for ecological stability. Synchronous dynamics can amplify the destabilizing effect of environmental variability on ecosystem functions such as productivity, whereas the inverse, compensatory dynamics, can stabilize function. Here we combine simulation and empirical analyses to elucidate mechanisms that underlie patterns of synchronous versus compensatory dynamics. In both simulated and empirical communities, we show that synchronous and compensatory dynamics are not mutually exclusive but instead can vary by timescale. Our simulations identify multiple mechanisms that can generate timescale‐specific patterns, including different environmental drivers, diverse life histories, dispersal, and non‐stationary dynamics. We find that traditional metrics for quantifying synchronous dynamics are often biased toward long‐term drivers and may miss the importance of short‐term drivers. Our findings indicate key mechanisms to consider when assessing synchronous versus compensatory dynamics and our approach provides a pathway for disentangling these dynamics in natural systems.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lauren M Hallett
- Environmental Studies Program and Department of Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
| | - Lei Zhao
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Biodiversity and Organic Farming, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
| | - Daniel C Reuman
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Kansas Biological Survey, University of Kansas, Higuchi Hall, 2101 Constant Ave, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
| | - Shaopeng Wang
- Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Science, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Kathryn L Cottingham
- Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
| | - Richard J Hobbs
- School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
| | - Max C N Castorani
- Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
| | - Amy L Downing
- Department of Zoology, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, USA
| | - Joan C Dudney
- Department of Plant Sciences, UC Davis, Davis, California, United States.,Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Samuel B Fey
- Department of Biology, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA
| | - Laureano A Gherardi
- Global Drylands Center and School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
| | - Nina Lany
- Department of Forestry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
| | - Cristina Portales-Reyes
- Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
| | - Andrew L Rypel
- Department of Fish, Wildlife & Conservation Biology, and Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California, Davis, California, USA
| | - Lawrence W Sheppard
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Kansas Biological Survey, University of Kansas, Higuchi Hall, 2101 Constant Ave, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
| | - Jonathan A Walter
- Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.,Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, New Jersey, United States
| | - Katharine N Suding
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
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8
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Christensen SA, Farr MT, Williams DM. Assessment and novel application of
N
‐mixture models for aerial surveys of wildlife. Ecosphere 2021. [DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.3725] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/11/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Sonja A. Christensen
- Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Boone and Crockett Quantitative Wildlife Center Michigan State University East Lansing Michigan 48824 USA
| | - Matthew T. Farr
- Department of Integrated Biology Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Program Michigan State University East Lansing Michigan 48824 USA
| | - David M. Williams
- Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Boone and Crockett Quantitative Wildlife Center Michigan State University East Lansing Michigan 48824 USA
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9
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Hernández E, Shaw EA, Aoyama L, Brambila A, Niederer C, Weiss SB, Hallett LM. Fire versus grazing as tools to restore serpentine grasslands under global change. Restor Ecol 2021. [DOI: 10.1111/rec.13353] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Eliza Hernández
- Environmental Studies Program University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
| | - E. Ashley Shaw
- Department of Biology University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
| | - Lina Aoyama
- Environmental Studies Program University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
- Department of Biology University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
| | - Alejandro Brambila
- Environmental Studies Program University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
- Department of Biology University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
| | | | - Stuart B. Weiss
- Creekside Center for Earth Observation Menlo Park CA 94025 U.S.A
| | - Lauren M. Hallett
- Environmental Studies Program University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
- Department of Biology University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A
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10
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The Net Effect of Functional Traits on Fitness. Trends Ecol Evol 2020; 35:1037-1047. [PMID: 32807503 DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2020.07.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 52] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/23/2020] [Revised: 07/14/2020] [Accepted: 07/17/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Generalizing the effect of traits on performance across species may be achievable if traits explain variation in population fitness. However, testing relationships between traits and vital rates to infer effects on fitness can be misleading. Demographic trade-offs can generate variation in vital rates that yield equal population growth rates, thereby obscuring the net effect of traits on fitness. To address this problem, we describe a diversity of approaches to quantify intrinsic growth rates of plant populations, including experiments beyond range boundaries, density-dependent population models built from long-term demographic data, theoretical models, and methods that leverage widely available monitoring data. Linking plant traits directly to intrinsic growth rates is a fundamental step toward rigorous predictions of population dynamics and community assembly.
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