Abstract
Understanding the responses of biodiversity to drivers of change and the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem properties and ecosystem services is a key challenge in the context of global environmental change. We performed a systematic review and meta‐analysis of the scientific literature linking direct drivers of change and ecosystem services via functional traits of three taxonomic groups (vegetation, invertebrates, and vertebrates) to: (1) uncover trends and research biases in this field; and (2) synthesize existing empirical evidence. Our results show the existence of important biases in published studies related to ecosystem types, taxonomic groups, direct drivers of change, ecosystem services, geographical range, and the spatial scale of analysis. We found multiple evidence of links between drivers and services mediated by functional traits, particularly between land‐use changes and regulating services in vegetation and invertebrates. Seventy‐five functional traits were recorded in our sample. However, few of these functional traits were repeatedly found to be associated with both the species responses to direct drivers of change (response traits) and the species effects on the provision of ecosystem services (effect traits). Our results highlight the existence of potential “key functional traits,” understood as those that have the capacity to influence the provision of multiple ecosystem services, while responding to specific drivers of change, across a variety of systems and organisms. Identifying “key functional traits” would help to develop robust indicator systems to monitor changes in biodiversity and their effects on ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services supply.
Highlights
Global biodiversity is being severely affected by drivers of change that are directly or indirectly induced by human activities
Our results highlight the existence of potential “key functional traits,” understood as those that have the capacity to influence the provision of multiple ecosystem services, while responding to specific drivers of change, across a variety of systems and organisms
The evidence synthesized here may help improve our understanding about the linkages between the response of biodiversity to environmental change and biodiversity effects on ecosystem services, which is the missing link of the so-called holy grail in functional ecology (Lavorel & Garnier, 2002; Lavorel et al, 2007)
Summary
Global biodiversity is being severely affected by drivers of change that are directly or indirectly induced by human activities. It has become increasingly clear that both the responses of biodiversity to drivers of change and the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem services may be explained by functional traits (Díaz et al, 2007). Recent trait-based approaches have assessed how ecosystem services might be affected by drivers of change (Quétier, Lavorel, Thuiller, & Davies, 2007) through the analysis of effect and response traits (Díaz et al, 2007, 2013; Lavorel, 2013; Lavorel & Garnier, 2002; Lavorel et al, 2011; Suding et al, 2008). We performed a systematic literature review and meta- analysis to synthesize existing empirical evidence about the interlinkages among direct drivers of change and ecosystem services, mediated by functional traits of three taxonomic groups (vegetation, invertebrates, and vertebrates). We identified existing knowledge gaps and suggested future challenges in the application of trait-based approaches for biodiversity monitoring
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