Biodiversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality across trophic levels and habitats

TLDR

Biodiversity’s role in integrated ecosystem functioning is unclear because most studies focus on single functions. The study aims to demonstrate that biodiversity’s influence on ecosystem function increases when multiple functions are considered. The authors conduct a systematic analysis of 94 species‑richness manipulations across taxa, trophic levels, and habitats to assess multifunctionality. They find that species‑rich communities sustain higher levels of multiple functions, with herbivore diversity having a stronger effect than plant diversity, consistent across aquatic and terrestrial systems, and that the overall benefit of biodiversity on multifunctionality grows as more functions are included, indicating previous studies underestimated its importance.

Abstract

Abstract The importance of biodiversity for the integrated functioning of ecosystems remains unclear because most evidence comes from analyses of biodiversity’s effect on individual functions. Here we show that the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem function become more important as more functions are considered. We present the first systematic investigation of biodiversity’s effect on ecosystem multifunctionality across multiple taxa, trophic levels and habitats using a comprehensive database of 94 manipulations of species richness. We show that species-rich communities maintained multiple functions at higher levels than depauperate ones. These effects were stronger for herbivore biodiversity than for plant biodiversity, and were remarkably consistent across aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Despite observed tradeoffs, the overall effect of biodiversity on multifunctionality grew stronger as more functions were considered. These results indicate that prior research has underestimated the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning by focusing on individual functions and taxonomic groups.