Predicting resilience of ecosystem functioning from co‐varying species' responses to environmental change

Predicting consequences of climate change for ecosystem functioning: variation across trophic levels, species and individuals

Results We found that the effect of increased temperature on population growth rates is independent of species interactions, but strongly species specific. This variation among herbivores is only partly predictable from differences in species distributions and traits, but translated into large differences in their ability to control macroalgae. Further, these species effects were amplified at w...

Predicting Responses to Contemporary Environmental Change Using Evolutionary Response Architectures.

Rapid environmental change currently presents a major threat to global biodiversity and ecosystem functions, and understanding impacts on individual populations is critical to creating reliable predictions and mitigation plans. One emerging tool for this goal is high-throughput sequencing technology, which can now be used to scan the genome for signs of environmental selection in any species an...

Environmental Niches and Ecosystem Functioning

Rare Species and Ecosystem Functioning

The role of diversity in the maintenance of ecosystems has been studied widely in the past decade. By correlating richness and diversity with basic ecosystem processes, these investigations lend support to the hypothesis that species diversity significantly influences ecosystem functioning and, in turn, provide support for the conservation of biodiversity. Nonetheless, the majority of these inv...

Predicting Ecosystem Responses to Elevated CO2 Concentrations

O ne of the many changes occurring in the biosphere due . to human activities is the increase in the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere. This change is due both to the burning of fossil fuels, which is ejecting approximately 5-6 gT of carbon into the atmosphere yearly, and to deforestation, which may account for another 1~2 gT (Moore and Bolin 1986/87, Detwiler and Hall 1988). The p...