Biodiversity can be measured at multiple organizational scales. While traditional studies have focused at taxonomic diversity, recent studies have emphasized the ecological importance of diversity within populations. However, it is unclear how these different scales of diversity interact to determine the consequence of species loss. Here we asked how predator diversity and presence of ontogenetic diversity within predator populations influences community structure. Ontogenetic diversity arises from shifts in the traits and ecology of individuals during ontogeny and it is one of the biggest sources of intraspecific diversity. However, whether it dampens or strengthens the negative consequences of with species loss is poorly understood. To study the interaction of species diversity and ontogenetic diversity, we experimentally manipulated predator species diversity and diversity of developmental stages within focal predator species and analysed their joint effect on predator and prey survival, biomass and prey community structure in experimental pond systems. While individual effects of ontogenetic diversity were often species specific, losing predator species from the community often had a much smaller or no effect on prey survival, biomass or community structure when all predator populations had high ontogenetic diversity. Thus, ontogenetic diversity within populations buffered against some of the consequences of biodiversity loss at higher organizational levels. Because the experiment controlled mean per capita size and biomass across structured versus unstructured populations, this pattern was not driven by differences in biomass of predators. Instead, results suggest that effects were driven by changes in the functional roles and indirect interactions across and within species. This indicates that even if all environmental conditions are similar, differences in the intrinsic structure of populations can modify the consequences of biodiversity loss. Together, these results revealed the importance of ontogenetic diversity within species for strengthening the resilience of natural communities to consequences of biodiversity loss and emphasize the need to integrate biodiversity patterns across organizational scales.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13470 | DOI Listing |
All species must partition resources among the processes that underly growth, survival, and reproduction. The resulting demographic trade-offs constrain the range of viable life-history strategies and are hypothesized to promote local coexistence. Tropical forests pose ideal systems to study demographic trade-offs as they have a high diversity of coexisting tree species whose life-history strategies tend to align along two orthogonal axes of variation: a growth-survival trade-off that separates species with fast growth from species with high survival and a stature-recruitment trade-off that separates species that achieve large stature from species with high recruitment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrees (Berl West)
January 2025
Department of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55099 Mainz, Germany.
Key Message:
Abstract: Tree-rings are the prime archive for high-resolution climate information over the past two millennia. However, the accuracy of annually resolved reconstructions from tree-rings can be constrained by what is known as climate signal age effects (CSAE), encompassing changes in the sensitivity of tree growth to climate over their lifespans. Here, we evaluate CSAE in from an upper tree line site in the Spanish central Pyrenees, Lake Gerber, which became a key location for reconstructing western Mediterranean summer temperatures at annual resolution.
Biol Lett
January 2025
Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia , Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Since the start of the twenty-first century, there has been a notable increase in annual publications focusing on dinosaur reproduction and ontogeny with researchers using these data to address a range of macroevolutionary questions about dinosaurs. Ontogeny, which is closely tied to osteological morphological variation, impacts several key research areas, such as taxonomic diversity, population dynamics, palaeoecology, macroevolution, as well as the physiological and reproductive factors driving ecological success. While these broad studies have significantly advanced our understanding of dinosaur evolution, they have also revealed important challenges and areas needing further investigation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anat
December 2024
Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
During the Late Permian, saber-toothed gorgonopsian therapsids were the dominant terrestrial predators, playing crucial roles as apex predators alongside therocephalian therapsids within Permian terrestrial ecosystems. The entire gorgonopsian clade went extinct during the Permo-Triassic mass extinction, leaving other therapsids to continue into the Triassic. Gorgonopsians have not been well studied, particularly in terms of their growth patterns, with only a few genera having undergone osteohistological analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anat
December 2024
Univ Lyon, Univ Lyon 1, ENSL, CNRS, LGL-TPE, Villeurbanne, France.
The endosseous labyrinths are associated with several functions, including hearing and spatial orientation. Throughout their evolutionary history, crocodylomorphs have thrived in diverse environments, and the morphology of their endosseous labyrinths has been suggested as a proxy for inferring their lifestyle. However, the relationships between the shape of their endosseous labyrinths and ontogenetic and phylogenetic factors are difficult to interpret and have rarely been investigated in depth previously, particularly in terms of dataset size.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!