Browsing by Subject "Functional groups"

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    Assessing the broad-scale impact of agriculturally transformed and protected area landscapes on avian taxonomic and functional richness
    (2009) Child, Matthew F; Cumming, Graeme S; Amano, Tatsuya
    Anthropogenic modification of natural habitat is resulting in a widespread loss of biodiversity. One of the primary responses of human societies to biodiversity loss has been the creation of protected areas. Two of the most important questions in conservation biology are: (1) whether protected areas are playing their intended role as reservoirs of biodiversity; and (2) whether habitat outside protected areas, particularly in agricultural landscapes, plays a significant role in maintaining biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides. Even though empirical evidence is still lacking on the exact mapping from functional group richness to specific ecosystem services, functional groups are good indicators of ecosystem functioning and thus service provision. We classified the South African avifauna into nine functional groups and tested at a coarse grain for differences in functional group composition between landscapes containing predominantly agricultural vs. protected areas. We used a matched pair sampling design to control for confounding variance. We found that avian functional groups respond in quantitatively and qualitatively distinct ways to agriculturally dominated landscapes. Raptors and scavengers displayed the most consistent losses, while nutrient dispersers and grazers tended to increase. Spatial detrending and randomisation tests suggested that only raptors and scavengers are negatively affected by agricultural landscapes independently of spatial autocorrelation. Thus, protected area landscapes are serving as important reservoirs of functionally important upper trophic populations while agricultural landscapes facilitate the presence of species that link aquatic and terrestrial systems. These results demonstrate the potential for complementary facets of functional diversity to exist on landscapes containing vastly different land-uses.
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    Density of key-species determines efficiency of macroalgae detritus uptake by intertidal benthic communities
    (Public Library of Science, 2016) Karlson, Agnes M L; Niemand, Clarisse; Savage, Candida; Pilditch, Conrad A
    Accumulating evidence shows that increased biodiversity has a positive effect on ecosystem functioning, but the mechanisms that underpin this positive relationship are contentious. Complete extinctions of regional species pools are comparatively rare whereas compositional changes and reductions in abundance and biomass are common, although seldom the focus of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning studies. We use natural, small-scale patchiness in the density of two species of large bivalves with contrasting feeding modes (the suspension-feeding Austrovenus stutchburyi and deposit-feeding Macomona liliana ) to examine their influence on the uptake of nitrogen from macroalgae detritus (i.e. measure of ecosystem function and food web efficiency) by other infauna in a 10-d laboratory isotope-tracer experiment. We predicted that densities of these key bivalve species and functional group diversity (calculated as Shannons H, a density-independent measure of community composition) of the intact infaunal community will be critical factors explaining variance in macroalgal per capita uptake rates by the community members and hence determine total uptake by the community. Results show that only two species, M . liliana and a large orbiniid polychaete ( Scoloplos cylindrifer ) dominated macroalgal nitrogen taken up by the whole community due to their large biomass. However, their densities were mostly not important or negatively influenced per capita uptake by other species. Instead, the density of a head-down deposit-feeder (the capitellid Heteromastus filiformis ), scavengers (mainly nemertines and nereids) and species and functional group diversity, best explained per capita uptake rates in community members. Our results demonstrate the importance of species identity, density and large body size for ecosystem functioning and highlight the complex interactions underlying loss of ecological functions with declining biodiversity and compositional changes.