Description: Numerous studies show that increasing species richness leads to higher ecosystem productivity. This effect is often attributed to more efficient portioning of multiple resources in communities with higher numbers of competing species, indicating the role of resource supply and stoichiometry for biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships. Here, we merged theory on ecological stoichiometry with a framework of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning to understand how resource use transfers into primary production. We applied a structural equation model to define patterns of diversity–productivity relationships with respect to available resources. Meta-analysis was used to summarize the findings across ecosystem types ranging from aquatic ecosystems to grasslands and forests. As hypothesized, resource supply increased realized productivity and richness, but we found significant differences between ecosystems and study types. Increased richness was associated with increased productivity, although this effect was not seen in experiments. More even communities had lower productivity, indicating that biomass production is often maintained by a few dominant species, and reduced dominance generally reduced ecosystem productivity. This synthesis, which integrates observational and experimental studies in a variety of ecosystems and geographical regions, exposes common patterns and differences in biodiversity–functioning relationships, and increases the mechanistic understanding of changes in ecosystems productivity.

Description: Climatic warming is a primary driver of change in ecosystems worldwide. Here, we synthesize responses of species richness and evenness from 187 experimental warming studies in a quantitative meta-analysis. We asked 1) whether effects of warming on diversity were detectable and consistent across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, 2) if effects on diversity correlated with intensity, duration, and experimental unit size of temperature change manipulations, and 3) whether these experimental effects on diversity interacted with ecosystem types. Using multilevel mixed linear models and model averaging, we also tested the relative importance of variables that described uncontrolled environmental variation and attributes of experimental units. Overall, experimental warming reduced richness across ecosystems (mean log-response ratio = –0.091, 95% bootstrapped CI: –0.13, –0.05) representing an 8.9% decline relative to ambient temperature treatments. Richness did not change in response to warming in freshwater systems, but was more strongly negative in terrestrial (–11.8%) and marine (–10.5%) experiments. In contrast, warming impacts on evenness were neutral overall and in aquatic systems, but weakly negative on land (7.6%). Intensity and duration of experimental warming did not explain variation in diversity responses, but negative effects on richness were stronger in smaller experimental units, particularly in marine systems. Model-averaged parameter estimation confirmed these main effects while accounting for variation in latitude, ambient temperature at the sites of manipulations, venue (field versus lab), community trophic type, and whether experiments were open or closed to colonization. These analyses synthesize extensive experimental evidence showing declines in local richness with increased temperature, particularly in terrestrial and marine communities. However, the more variable effects of warming on evenness were better explained by the random effect of site identity, suggesting that effects on species’ relative abundances were contingent on local species composition.

Description: About 60 years ago, the critical depth hypothesis was proposed to describe the occurrence of spring phytoplankton blooms and emphasized the role of stratification for the timing of onset. Since then, several alternative hypotheses appeared focusing on the role of grazing and mixing processes such as turbulent convection or wind activity. Surprisingly, the role of community composition—and thus the distribution of phytoplankton traits—for bloom formation has not been addressed. Here, we discuss how trait variability between competing species might influence phytoplankton growth during the onset of the spring bloom. We hypothesize that the bloom will only occur if there are species with a combination of traits fitting to the environmental conditions at the respective location and time. The basic traits for formation of the typical spring bloom are high growth rates and photoadaptation to low light conditions, but other traits such as nutrient kinetics and grazing resistance might also be important. We present concise ideas on how to test our theoretical considerations experimentally. Furthermore, we suggest that future models of phytoplankton blooms should include both water column dynamics and variability of phytoplankton traits to make realistic projections instead of treating the phytoplankton bloom as an aggregate community phenomenon.