Biology subjects

Cadotte, M. W.

Publications and source records attributed to Cadotte, M. W..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Enhancing structural heterogeneity in managed forest landscapes promotes gamma but not beta diversity in understorey plant communities

O_LIAlthough habitat heterogeneity is known to enhance local species diversity, the effects of management-driven structural heterogeneity on understorey plant communities across spatial scales remain poorly understood, despite their crucial role for forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. C_LIO_LITo analyse how forest understorey plant communities respond to an enhancement of structural heterogeneity in managed forests, we established 11 experimental sites consisting of two paired forest landscapes, an untreated homogenous control and a treatment district (ESBC). In treatment districts, structural heterogeneity was enhanced through different combinations of local patch-scale manipulations of light and deadwood features, leading to greater between-patch heterogeneity at the landscape scale. We performed a meta-analysis across these 11 sites using a Hill-Chao number and sample coverage standardisation framework. C_LIO_LIGamma diversity increased across taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic facets in structurally heterogeneous forests (ESBC districts) via higher alpha diversity. This effect was positively associated with heterogeneity in light availability between forest patches, but not with their mean light availability. In contrast, we found no support that species turnover among patches (i.e., beta diversity) significantly contributes on average to the observed increase in gamma diversity. However, both the direction and magnitude of beta diversity responses varied substantially among landscapes. C_LIO_LIOn average, structurally heterogeneous forests supported higher species richness for both open and closed forest habitat species. C_LIO_LISynthesis and applications: Our findings highlight the benefits of enhancing structural heterogeneity for understorey plant diversity in managed forest landscapes. Specifically, management strategies that create a spatial mosaic of interventions, such as combining single-tree removal with group felling, can increase the variety of light niches among forest patches, thereby supporting the conservation of a wide range of understorey plant species, including forest specialists. C_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2023

Response diversity is key to buffer ecosystem productivity against multiple environmental change drivers

Evidence shows that biodiversity promotes primary productivity. However, it is unclear whether such biodiversity-productivity relationships persist under increasing numbers of environmental changes in the current Anthropocene. Here, we use theoretical and experimental approaches to demonstrate that variation in species responses to changing environments determines the ability of ecological communities to maintain productivity under multiple types of environmental change. Our theory shows that this response diversity determines whether biodiversity-productivity relationships are enhanced or impaired by environmental changes. Communities with high response diversity are expected not only to be productive in a particular environment but to maintain that productivity under multiple conditions. Nevertheless, our theory also predicts that such buffering effects fade with increasing negative environmental impacts on communities. Consistent with this prediction, our biodiversity experiment reveals impaired biodiversity-productivity relationships under multiple environmental change drivers with a negative mean impact. Our results suggest that, in the face of growing multiplicity of environmental changes, policies should encourage conservation of local biota, enabling communities to respond to unprecedented environments that may arise.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

Partitioning the temporal changes in abundance-based beta diversity into loss and gain components

O_LIEcologists have long recognized that the losses and gains in local species abundances can either decrease or increase spatial beta diversity, phenomena often referred to as biotic homogenization and differentiation, respectively. However, quantifying such dynamic impacts of species abundances on beta diversity has remained a methodological challenge. C_LIO_LIHere, we develop a numerical method to additively partition the temporal changes in beta diversity into distinct components that reflect the losses and gains in local species abundances. Our method is based on Ru[z]i[c]ka and Bray-Curtis indices and the normalized abundance-based Whittakers beta diversity. The temporal changes in these measures are partitioned into components that represent biotic homogenization and differentiation driven by abundance losses and gains at both species and community levels. C_LIO_LIApplication of the method to a Swedish fish community dataset revealed decreases in beta diversity between 1990 and 2018. The homogenization of fish communities was explained by gains, but not losses, in species abundances across sites. Species-level partitioning further showed that the homogenization was largely caused by the increased population sizes of a particular species in sites where it was already present. C_LIO_LIThe results highlight that our partitioning method effectively identifies local population and community processes embedded in regional biodiversity patterns. We believe that explicit analyses of the losses and gains in species abundances should bring deeper insights into the dynamics of beta diversity. C_LI

ecology↗