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      Functional biodiversity loss along natural CO 2 gradients

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          Abstract

          The effects of environmental change on biodiversity are still poorly understood. In particular, the consequences of shifts in species composition for marine ecosystem function are largely unknown. Here we assess the loss of functional diversity, i.e. the range of species biological traits, in benthic marine communities exposed to ocean acidification (OA) by using natural CO 2 vent systems. We found that functional richness is greatly reduced with acidification, and that functional loss is more pronounced than the corresponding decrease in taxonomic diversity. In acidified conditions, most organisms accounted for a few functional entities (i.e. unique combination of functional traits), resulting in low functional redundancy. These results suggest that functional richness is not buffered by functional redundancy under OA, even in highly diverse assemblages, such as rocky benthic communities.

          Abstract

          Locations in the ocean where CO 2 naturally seeps from the seafloor can be used to infer potential responses to ocean acidification. Here the authors explore the functional composition of benthic communities along a natural CO 2 gradient, showing a loss of functional diversity at high-CO 2 sites.

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          Rebuilding community ecology from functional traits.

          There is considerable debate about whether community ecology will ever produce general principles. We suggest here that this can be achieved but that community ecology has lost its way by focusing on pairwise species interactions independent of the environment. We assert that community ecology should return to an emphasis on four themes that are tied together by a two-step process: how the fundamental niche is governed by functional traits within the context of abiotic environmental gradients; and how the interaction between traits and fundamental niches maps onto the realized niche in the context of a biotic interaction milieu. We suggest this approach can create a more quantitative and predictive science that can more readily address issues of global change.
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            Ocean acidification: the other CO2 problem.

            Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), primarily from human fossil fuel combustion, reduces ocean pH and causes wholesale shifts in seawater carbonate chemistry. The process of ocean acidification is well documented in field data, and the rate will accelerate over this century unless future CO2 emissions are curbed dramatically. Acidification alters seawater chemical speciation and biogeochemical cycles of many elements and compounds. One well-known effect is the lowering of calcium carbonate saturation states, which impacts shell-forming marine organisms from plankton to benthic molluscs, echinoderms, and corals. Many calcifying species exhibit reduced calcification and growth rates in laboratory experiments under high-CO2 conditions. Ocean acidification also causes an increase in carbon fixation rates in some photosynthetic organisms (both calcifying and noncalcifying). The potential for marine organisms to adapt to increasing CO2 and broader implications for ocean ecosystems are not well known; both are high priorities for future research. Although ocean pH has varied in the geological past, paleo-events may be only imperfect analogs to current conditions.
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              New multidimensional functional diversity indices for a multifaceted framework in functional ecology.

              Functional diversity is increasingly identified as an important driver of ecosystem functioning. Various indices have been proposed to measure the functional diversity of a community, but there is still no consensus on which are most suitable. Indeed, none of the existing indices meets all the criteria required for general use. The main criteria are that they must be designed to deal with several traits, take into account abundances, and measure all the facets of functional diversity. Here we propose three indices to quantify each facet of functional diversity for a community with species distributed in a multidimensional functional space: functional richness (volume of the functional space occupied by the community), functional evenness (regularity of the distribution of abundance in this volume), and functional divergence (divergence in the distribution of abundance in this volume). Functional richness is estimated using the existing convex hull volume index. The new functional evenness index is based on the minimum spanning tree which links all the species in the multidimensional functional space. Then this new index quantifies the regularity with which species abundances are distributed along the spanning tree. Functional divergence is measured using a novel index which quantifies how species diverge in their distances (weighted by their abundance) from the center of gravity in the functional space. We show that none of the indices meets all the criteria required for a functional diversity index, but instead we show that the set of three complementary indices meets these criteria. Through simulations of artificial data sets, we demonstrate that functional divergence and functional evenness are independent of species richness and that the three functional diversity indices are independent of each other. Overall, our study suggests that decomposition of functional diversity into its three primary components provides a meaningful framework for its quantification and for the classification of existing functional diversity indices. This decomposition has the potential to shed light on the role of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and on the influence of biotic and abiotic filters on the structure of species communities. Finally, we propose a general framework for applying these three functional diversity indices.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                nuria.teixido@szn.it
                Journal
                Nat Commun
                Nat Commun
                Nature Communications
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2041-1723
                11 December 2018
                11 December 2018
                2018
                : 9
                : 5149
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Villa Dohrn-Benthic Ecology Center, Punta San Pietro Ischia, 80077 Naples, Italy
                [2 ]ISNI 0000000419368956, GRID grid.168010.e, Hopkins Marine Station, , Stanford University, ; Pacific Grove, CA 93950 USA
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2192 5916, GRID grid.11136.34, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, CRIOBE, USR 3278, PSL-EPHE-CNRS-UPVD, LABEX Corail, , University of Perpignan, ; 66860 Perpignan, France
                [4 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0740 6917, GRID grid.205975.c, University of California, Santa Cruz, ; Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA
                [5 ]ISNI 0000000419368956, GRID grid.168010.e, Center for Ocean Solutions, , Stanford University, ; Pacific Grove, CA 93950 USA
                [6 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2097 0141, GRID grid.121334.6, MARBEC, Université de Montpellier-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-IRD-IFREMER, , University of Montpellier, ; 34095 Montpellier, France
                [7 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0159 2034, GRID grid.423563.5, Centre d’Estudis Avançats de Blanes – CSIC, ; Blanes, 17300 Girona Spain
                [8 ]Present Address: Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9286-2852
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0168-776X
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3408-1625
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5766-1999
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6865-1438
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2362-7178
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5532-5337
                Article
                7592
                10.1038/s41467-018-07592-1
                6288110
                30531929
                5609f3a7-4ddc-4012-b4e5-ae747224f98d
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 25 April 2018
                : 9 November 2018
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