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Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring

Publication ,  Journal Article
Hillebrand, H; Blasius, B; Borer, ET; Chase, JM; Downing, JA; Eriksson, BK; Filstrup, CT; Harpole, WS; Hodapp, D; Larsen, S; Lewandowska, AM ...
Published in: Journal of Applied Ecology.
January 2018

Global concern about human impact on biological diversity has triggered an intense research agenda on drivers and consequences of biodiversity change in parallel with international policy seeking to conserve biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions. Quantifying the trends in biodiversity is far from trivial, however, as recently documented by meta‐analyses, which report little if any net change in local species richness through time. Here, we summarise several limitations of species richness as a metric of biodiversity change and show that the expectation of directional species richness trends under changing conditions is invalid. Instead, we illustrate how a set of species turnover indices provide more information content regarding temporal trends in biodiversity, as they reflect how dominance and identity shift in communities over time. We apply these metrics to three monitoring datasets representing different ecosystem types. In all datasets, nearly complete species turnover occurred, but this was disconnected from any species richness trends. Instead, turnover was strongly influenced by changes in species presence (identities) and dominance (abundances). We further show that these metrics can detect phases of strong compositional shifts in monitoring data and thus identify a different aspect of biodiversity change decoupled from species richness. Synthesis and applications: Temporal trends in species richness are insufficient to capture key changes in biodiversity in changing environments. In fact, reductions in environmental quality can lead to transient increases in species richness if immigration or extinction has different temporal dynamics. Thus, biodiversity monitoring programmes need to go beyond analyses of trends in richness in favour of more meaningful assessments of biodiversity change.

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Published In

Journal of Applied Ecology.

DOI

ISSN

0021-8901

Publication Date

January 2018

Volume

55

Issue

1

Start / End Page

169 / 184

Related Subject Headings

  • Ecology
  • 4104 Environmental management
  • 3109 Zoology
  • 3103 Ecology
  • 0602 Ecology
  • 0502 Environmental Science and Management
  • 0501 Ecological Applications
 

Citation

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Hillebrand, H., Blasius, B., Borer, E. T., Chase, J. M., Downing, J. A., Eriksson, B. K., … Ryabov, A. B. (2018). Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring. Journal of Applied Ecology., 55(1), 169–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12959
Hillebrand, Helmut, Bernd Blasius, Elizabeth T. Borer, Jonathan M. Chase, John A. Downing, Britas Klemens Eriksson, Christopher T. Filstrup, et al. “Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring.” Journal of Applied Ecology. 55, no. 1 (January 2018): 169–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12959.
Hillebrand H, Blasius B, Borer ET, Chase JM, Downing JA, Eriksson BK, et al. Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring. Journal of Applied Ecology. 2018 Jan;55(1):169–84.
Hillebrand, Helmut, et al. “Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring.” Journal of Applied Ecology., vol. 55, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 169–84. Epmc, doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12959.
Hillebrand H, Blasius B, Borer ET, Chase JM, Downing JA, Eriksson BK, Filstrup CT, Harpole WS, Hodapp D, Larsen S, Lewandowska AM, Seabloom EW, Van de Waal DB, Ryabov AB. Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring. Journal of Applied Ecology. 2018 Jan;55(1):169–184.
Journal cover image

Published In

Journal of Applied Ecology.

DOI

ISSN

0021-8901

Publication Date

January 2018

Volume

55

Issue

1

Start / End Page

169 / 184

Related Subject Headings

  • Ecology
  • 4104 Environmental management
  • 3109 Zoology
  • 3103 Ecology
  • 0602 Ecology
  • 0502 Environmental Science and Management
  • 0501 Ecological Applications