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Species diversity enhances ecosystem functioning through interspecific facilitation.

Bradley J Cardinale1, Margaret A Palmer, Scott L Collins

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Biodiversity enhances ecosystem productivity through species facilitation. Increased aquatic insect diversity improved resource consumption by altering water flow, demonstrating a key mechanism linking biodiversity to ecosystem function.

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Environmental Science
  • Aquatic Ecology

Background:

  • Species facilitation is hypothesized to link biodiversity to ecosystem resource use and productivity.
  • Empirical evidence directly supporting this facilitation hypothesis has been lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To provide direct empirical evidence for the role of species facilitation in mediating the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
  • To investigate how increasing species diversity within a functional group impacts resource consumption and ecosystem processes.

Main Methods:

  • Experimental manipulation of species richness and evenness of suspension-feeding caddisfly larvae (Insecta, Trichoptera) in stream mesocosms.
  • Assessment of changes in benthic habitat topographical complexity and near-bed flow patterns.
  • Quantification of resource consumption by diverse larval assemblages compared to monocultures.

Main Results:

  • Increased species diversity of caddisfly larvae induced facilitative interactions.
  • Altered topographical complexity and near-bed flow patterns enhanced individual feeding success.
  • Diverse assemblages captured a greater fraction of suspended resources than monocultures due to reduced 'current shading'.

Conclusions:

  • Species diversity can directly drive facilitative interactions, leading to non-additive changes in ecosystem resource consumption.
  • Hydrodynamic facilitation, driven by biodiversity, is a fundamental mechanism with broad applicability across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
  • Changes in species diversity can disproportionately alter ecosystem functioning through altered species interactions.