Functional traits, the phylogeny of function, and ecosystem service vulnerability

TLDR

People depend on ecological systems for benefits, and understanding how ecosystem services and their underlying properties respond to change is an urgent priority. The study develops a novel risk‑assessment framework that integrates ecological and evolutionary perspectives on functional traits to evaluate species’ effects on ecosystems and their tolerance to environmental change. The framework defines Specific Effect Function (SEF) and Specific Response Function (SRF) to quantify species’ impacts and tolerances, assesses how their correlation and phylogenetic patterns influence ecosystem service security, considers four theoretical risk scenarios, and demonstrates the approach with five plant and animal case studies.

Abstract

Abstract People depend on benefits provided by ecological systems. Understanding how these ecosystem services – and the ecosystem properties underpinning them – respond to drivers of change is therefore an urgent priority. We address this challenge through developing a novel risk‐assessment framework that integrates ecological and evolutionary perspectives on functional traits to determine species’ effects on ecosystems and their tolerance of environmental changes. We define Specific Effect Function ( SEF ) as the per‐gram or per capita capacity of a species to affect an ecosystem property, and Specific Response Function ( SRF ) as the ability of a species to maintain or enhance its population as the environment changes. Our risk assessment is based on the idea that the security of ecosystem services depends on how effects ( SEF s) and tolerances ( SRF s) of organisms – which both depend on combinations of functional traits – correlate across species and how they are arranged on the species’ phylogeny. Four extreme situations are theoretically possible, from minimum concern when SEF and SRF are neither correlated nor show a phylogenetic signal, to maximum concern when they are negatively correlated (i.e., the most important species are the least tolerant) and phylogenetically patterned (lacking independent backup). We illustrate the assessment with five case studies, involving both plant and animal examples. However, the extent to which the frequency of the four plausible outcomes, or their intermediates, apply more widely in real‐world ecological systems is an open question that needs empirical evidence, and suggests a research agenda at the interface of evolutionary biology and ecosystem ecology.