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Related Experiment Video

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Experimental Protocol for Manipulating Plant-induced Soil Heterogeneity

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Published on: March 13, 2014

Biodiversity change under adaptive community dynamics.

Tadhg Carroll^1,2, Françoise Cardou³, Maria Dornelas^1,4

¹Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, University of York, York, UK.

Global Change Biology

|March 14, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Ecological communities adapt to environmental change through compositional shifts that improve overall fitness and ecosystem function. These adaptive community dynamics can yield both desirable and undesirable outcomes, necessitating careful management strategies.

Keywords:

adaptive dynamics anthropocene environments community ecology ecosystem function environmental change species turnover

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Environmental Science

Background:

Ecological communities often change composition in response to global environmental change, typically viewed as a loss of biotic integrity.
Evolutionary biology recognizes adaptive genetic change within species as a mechanism for persistence under environmental shifts.

Purpose of the Study:

To propose an analogous concept of adaptive community dynamics, where compositional changes enhance community-level fitness and ecosystem function.
To distinguish between environmental drivers and adaptive community responses in the context of global change.

Main Methods:

Conceptual framework based on principles of fitness and natural selection applied to ecological communities.
Analysis of how environmental change impacts the fit between organism traits and environment.
Evaluation of consequences of compositional shifts on community function and societal values.

Main Results:

Environmental changes can decrease the fit of existing communities, but subsequent compositional changes should increase community-level fit.
Adaptive community dynamics are likely to maintain or improve ecosystem functions like productivity.
Community adaptation can result in both beneficial (e.g., carbon storage) and detrimental (e.g., species decline) outcomes.

Conclusions:

Adaptive community dynamics represent a crucial ecological response to environmental change, improving organism-environment fit and ecosystem function.
Management interventions must differentiate between environmental drivers and adaptive community responses.
Reconsidering preferences for historical baselines in favor of adapted communities may be necessary.