Abstract
Declines in invertebrate biodiversity1,2 pose a significant threat to key ecosystem services.3-5 Current analyses of biodiversity often focus on taxonomic diversity (e.g., species richness),6,7 which does not account for the functional role of a species. Functional diversity of species' morphological or behavioral traits is likely more relevant to ecosystem service delivery than taxonomic diversity, as functional diversity has been found to be a key driver of a number of ecosystem services including decomposition and pollination.8-12 At present, we lack a good understanding of long-term and large-scale changes in functional diversity, which limits our capacity to determine the vulnerability of key ecosystem services with ongoing biodiversity change. Here we derive trends in functional diversity and taxonomic diversity over a 45-year period across Great Britain for species supporting freshwater aquatic functions, pollination, natural pest control, and agricultural pests (adisservice). Species supporting aquatic functions showed a synchronous collapse and recovery in functional and taxonomic diversity. In contrast, pollinators showed an increase in taxonomic diversity, but a decline and recovery in functional diversity. Pest control agents and pests showed greater stability in functional diversity over the assessment period. We also found that functional diversity could appear stable or show patterns of recovery, despite ongoing changes in the composition of traits among species. Our results suggest that invertebrate assemblages can show considerable variability in their functional structure over time at a national scale, which provides an important step in determining the long-term vulnerability of key ecosystem services with ongoing biodiversity change.
Highlights
Assessments of biodiversity change have predominantly focused on trends in taxonomic diversity, which quantify changes based on the presence/ absence or abundance of different species.[1,2,6,13]
Species are not necessarily interchangeable in the role they perform in an ecosystem and how they contribute to key ecosystem services, such as pest control, pollination and aquatic nutrient processing, and energy flows.[5,14,15]
For species supporting aquatic functions, we found a steep decline in taxonomic diversity and functional diversity between 1970 and 2000, followed by recovery in both diversity measures (Figure 1), whereas for pollinators, increases in taxonomic diversity over the start of the 45-year period were contrasted with declines in functional diversity (Figure 1)
Summary
Declines in invertebrate biodiversity[1,2] pose a significant threat to key ecosystem services.[3,4,5] Current analyses of biodiversity often focus on taxonomic diversity (e.g., species richness),[6,7] which does not account for the functional role of a species. We derive trends in functional diversity and taxonomic diversity over a 45-year period across Great Britain for species supporting freshwater aquatic functions, pollination, natural pest control, and agricultural pests (a disservice). Species supporting aquatic functions showed a synchronous collapse and recovery in functional and taxonomic diversity. Pollinators showed an increase in taxonomic diversity, but a decline and recovery in functional diversity. Our results suggest that invertebrate assemblages can show considerable variability in their functional structure over time at a national scale, which provides an important step in determining the long-term vulnerability of key ecosystem services with ongoing biodiversity change
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