Biology subjects

Zuppinger-Dingley, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Zuppinger-Dingley, D..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Causal discovery in biodiversity-mediated social-ecological systems

Global biodiversity loss and climate change exacerbate feedbacks within social-ecological systems, i.e., between ecosystems, their services and well-being of human societies. Our ability to mediate these feedbacks is hampered by incomplete understanding of the underlying causal links, which could benefit from interdisciplinary approaches to discover theoretical or empirical links from heterogeneous data characteristic of social-ecological studies. We propose a novel framework connecting literature-based causal knowledge with data-driven inference of causality. We test this framework for the highly biodiverse island of Borneo by conducting a systematic literature review of 7473 studies over 170 years, and a causal inference analysis for three conceptual causal diagrams connecting global change, socio-economics, ecosystem services, and biodiversity-ecosystem function using a set of 227 spatially explicit variables. We find that, while natural or social processes have been mostly studied independently, a set of studies already documents causal links across social-ecological domains for processes related to deforestation, food or energy. Causal discovery unveiled consistent negative causal links between global change, social-economic landscape, and biodiversity-ecosystem function, and positive causal links between global change and socio-economics, and these links were robust to indicator selection and addition. We detected few and weak links between social-economic landscape, global change, and ecosystem services. When comparing the data-driven inferred causal links to those documented by the literature, we find that links between biodiversity and ecosystem function with global change, and links between social-economic landscape and ecosystem services were also consistent, and causal analysis uncovered new (potential) causal links not yet described in the literature. Significance StatementAddressing climate change and biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene requires us to recognize that human societies and ecological systems are inherently interconnected in complex adaptive systems. Causal understanding in social-ecological systems enables understanding system dynamics and response to pressures and shocks. While promising, few studies have studied these systems using a combination of big literature which provides the state-of-the-knowledge and big data that provides the underlying information for causal discovery. With this framework, we can specify and rigorously test, causal links in biodiversity-mediated social-ecological processes under global change and examine potential interventions that lead to much needed sustainable outcomes.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Biodiversity increases the forecastability of species abundances in changing environments

Accurate forecasts of ecological dynamics are critical for ecosystem management and conservation, yet the drivers of forecastability are poorly understood. Environmental change and diversity are considered major challenges to ecological forecasting. This assumption, however, has never been tested experimentally because forecasts have high data requirements. In a long-term microcosm experiment, we manipulated species richness of 30 experimental protist communities and exposed them to constant or gradually decreasing light levels. We collected finely-resolved time series (123 sampling dates over 41 weeks) of species abundances, community biomass, and oxygen concentrations. We then employed data-driven forecasting methods to forecast these variables. We found that species richness and light had a weak interactive effect on forecasts of species abundances: richness tended to reduce forecast accuracy in constant light but tended to increase forecast accuracy in declining light. These effects could partially be explained by differences among time series in variability and autocorrelation. Forecasts of aggregate properties (community biomass, oxygen), however, were unaffected by richness and light, and were not more accurate than those of species abundances. Our forecasts were based on time series that were detrended and standardized. Since real-world forecasting applications require predictions at the original scale of the forecasted variable, it is important to note that the results were qualitatively identical when back-transforming the forecasts to the original scale. Taken together, we found no strong evidence that higher diversity results in lower forecastability. Rather, our results imply that promoting diversity could make populations more predictable when environmental conditions change. From a conservation and management perspective, our findings suggest that diversity conservation might have beneficial effects on decision-taking by increasing the forecastability of species abundances in changing environments.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Testing for co-adaptation of plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in a biodiversity experiment

O_LIBiodiversity loss not only impairs ecosystem functioning but can also alter the selection for traits in plant communities. At high diversity selection favours traits that allow for greater niche partitioning, whereas at low diversity selection may favour greater defence against pathogens. However, it is unknown whether changes in plant diversity also select for altered interactions with soil organisms.\nC_LIO_LIWe assessed whether the responses in plant growth and functional traits to their local arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) communities have been altered by the diversity of the plant communities from which both plants and AMF communities were obtained. We grew plants with AMF communities that originated from either plant monocultures or mixtures in a fully factorial design that included both negative and positive controls, by inoculating no AMF or a foreign AMF respectively.\nC_LIO_LIWe found that AMF from plant mixtures were more beneficial than monoculture AMF for two out of five plant species. Plants from mixtures generally grew better than those from monocultures, but suffered greater damage by leaf pathogens. Although plant growth and phenotypic responses were dependent on the AMF communities with which they associated, we found little evidence for plant growth responses specific to their local AMF communities and results differed between species and traits.\nC_LIO_LIOur results show that plants from mixtures were selected for increased growth at the expense of reduced defence and vice versa for plants from monocultures, providing evidence for plant diversity-dependent selection on competitive growth vs. defence. Furthermore, our study suggests that effects of a common history between plants and AMF do not follow a general pattern leading to increased or decreased mutualism.\nC_LIO_LISynthesis: Here we provide evidence that biodiversity loss can alter evolutionary trajectories of plant phenotypes and responses to their local AMF communities. However, the selection for altered plant-AMF interactions differ between plant species. To understand how plant communities respond and evolve under a changing environment requires further knowledge about life strategies of plant species and their above-belowground interactions.\nC_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Selection in response to community diversity alters plant performance in newly assembled test communities

In grassland biodiversity experiments the positive biodiversityn-ecosystem functioning relationship generally increases over time. However, we know little about the underlying short-term evolutionary processes. Using five plant species selected for twelve years in a biodiversity experiment in mixture or monoculture and plants without such a selection history, we assessed whether differential selection altered productivity, biodiversity effects, and functional trait differences within newly assembled monocultures and 2-species mixtures. Plants without past community selection history produced the lowest assemblage biomass and showed the weakest biodiversity effects. In newly assembled mixtures, plants with a selection history in mixtures produced more biomass than plants with a monoculture selection history. Biodiversity effects were generally positive and differed significantly between selection histories. However, contrary to our expectations, biodiversity effects were not stronger for mixture-type plants. Biodiversity effects were influenced by both trait differences between plants and community-weighted means, but these relationships were mostly independent of selection history. Our findings suggest that twelve years of selection history in monocultures or species mixtures differentiated plants of each species into monoculture- and mixture-types. Such rapid evolution of different community-types within grassland species and its effect on ecosystem services and functioning are likely to be important for species conservation practice.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Community selection increases biodiversity effects

Species extinctions from local communities can negatively affect ecosystem functioning. Ecological mechanisms underlying these impacts are well studied but the role of evolutionary processes is rarely assessed. Using a long-term field experiment, we tested whether natural selection in plant communities increased the effects of biodiversity on productivity. We re-assembled communities with 8-year co-selection history adjacent to communities with identical species composition but no history of co-selection (\"naive communities\"). Monocultures and in particular mixtures of two to four co-selected species were more productive than their corresponding naive communities over four years in soils with or without co-selected microbial communities. At the highest diversity level of eight plant species, no such differences were observed. Our findings suggest that plant community evolution can lead to rapid increases in ecosystem functioning at low diversity but may take longer at high diversity. This effect was not modified by treatments that simulated additional co-evolutionary processes between plants and soil organisms.

ecology↗