The role of spatial context explaining functional redundancy effects on biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships

Functional redundancy quantifies the degree to which ecological roles are supported by few or many species and individuals in a community. At local scales, multiple evidence shows that communities with high functional redundancy tend to maintain high levels of ecosystem functioning after disturbance. However, it is more challenging to demonstrate quantitatively the links between changes in functional redundancy and ecosystem functioning at large spatial scales. This is because communities spatially disassemble non-randomly after disturbance depending on factors relating to resource complementarity among local patches, spatial variation in environmental conditions and connectivity.

In this project, we will explore how accounting for spatial context at landscape scales affects the importance of functional redundancy explaining biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships. First, we will do a literature review to synthesise results of studies from diverse ecosystems and show how biodiversity – ecosystem function relationships depend not only on functional redundancy patterns, but also on how a communities’ initial trait structure at a baseline time (i.e., pre – disturbance) may be affected by spatial processes. This includes the influence of edge effects, habitat heterogeneity and landscape matrix composition. We will also use a modelling approach to derive explicit hypotheses of how functional redundancy changes across different spatial scales. For this, we will use a spatially explicit metacommunity model developed by members from the lab. This model can be adapted to evaluate how landscape change affects the association between species richness and different metrics of functional diversity.

We expect to show that without accounting for the effects of spatial context, it is not possible to establish thresholds of functional redundancy that could be used as tangible management targets for the maintenance of high functional diversity. This remains a critical objective for truly understanding ecosystem functioning at spatial scales that are the most relevant to biodiversity conservation and policy.