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Revisiting spatial scale in the productivity-species richness relationship: fundamental issues and global change implications.

ABSTRACT: The relationship between net primary productivity (NPP) and species richness has been the subject of long-running debate. A changing climate gives added impetus to resolving this debate, as it becomes increasingly necessary to predict biodiversity responses that might arise from shifts in productivity or its climatic correlates. It has become increasingly clear that at small scales productivity-species richness relationships (PSRs) are variable, while at macro scales relationships are typically positive. We demonstrate the importance of explicitly considering scale in discussions on PSRs even at large scales by showing that distinct patterns emerge in a global dataset of terrestrial ecoregions when ecoregions are binned into size classes. At all sizes, PSRs in ecoregions are positive, but the strength of the PSR scales positively with ecoregion size. In small ecoregions (10(3)-10(4) km(2)), factors correlating with productivity play only a minor role in species richness patterns, while in large ecoregions (>10(5) km(2)), NPP modelled from remotely sensed data is able to explain most of the variation in species richness. Better understanding the effects of scale on PSRs contributes to the debate on the relationship between species richness and productivity, which in turn allows us to better predict how both long- and short-term biodiversity patterns and ecosystem functioning might be altered under global change scenarios. This gives focus on future research to clarify causal pathways between species richness and productivity with appropriate attention to scale as an important focusing element.

SUBMITTER: McBride PD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4231355 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Revisiting spatial scale in the productivity-species richness relationship: fundamental issues and global change implications.

McBride Paul D PD Cusens Jarrod J Gillman Len N LN

AoB PLANTS 20140923

The relationship between net primary productivity (NPP) and species richness has been the subject of long-running debate. A changing climate gives added impetus to resolving this debate, as it becomes increasingly necessary to predict biodiversity responses that might arise from shifts in productivity or its climatic correlates. It has become increasingly clear that at small scales productivity-species richness relationships (PSRs) are variable, while at macro scales relationships are typically ...[more]

PMID: 25249265

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Project description:The current rates of biodiversity loss have exceeded the rates observed during the earth's major extinction events, which spurs the studies of the ecological relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functions, stability, and services to determine the consequences of biodiversity loss. Plant species richness-productivity relationship (SRPR) is crucial to the understanding of these relationships in plants. Most ecologists have reached a widespread consensus that the loss of plant diversity undoubtedly impairs ecosystem functions, and have proposed many processes to explain the SRPR. However, none of the available studies has satisfactorily described the forms and mechanisms clarifying the SRPR. Observed results of the SRPR forms are inconsistent, and studies have long debated the ecological processes explaining the SRPR. Here, I have developed a simple model that combines the positive and/or negative effects of sixteen ecological processes on the SRPR and models that describe the dynamics of complementary-selection effect, density effect, and the interspecific competitive stress influenced by other ecological processes. I can regulate the strengths of the effects of these ecological processes to derive the asymptotic, positive, humped, negative, and irregular forms of the SRPR, and verify these forms using the observed data. The results demonstrated that the different strengths of the ecological processes determine the forms of the SRPR. The forms of the SRPR can change with variations in the strengths of the ecological processes. The dynamic characteristics of the complementary-selection effect, density effect, and the interspecific competitive stress on the SRPR are diverse, and are dependent on the strengths and variation of the ecological processes. This report explains the diverse forms of the SRPR, clarifies the integrative effects of the different ecological processes on the SRPR, and deepens our understanding of the interactions that occur among these ecological processes.

Dataset Information

Revisiting spatial scale in the productivity-species richness relationship: fundamental issues and global change implications.

Publications

Revisiting spatial scale in the productivity-species richness relationship: fundamental issues and global change implications.

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