RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The diversity of interaction types drives the functioning of ecological communities
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 411249
DO 10.1101/411249
A1 Vincent Miele
A1 Christian Guill
A1 Rodrigo Ramos-Jiliberto
A1 Sonia Kéfi
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/07/411249.abstract
AB Ecological communities are undeniably diverse, both in terms of the species that compose them as well as the type of interactions that link species to each other. Despite this long-recognition of the coexistence of multiple interaction types in nature, little is known about the consequences of this diversity for community functioning. In the ongoing context of global change and increasing species extinction rates, it seems crucial to improve our understanding of the drivers of the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem functioning.Here, using a multispecies dynamical model of ecological communities including various interaction types (e.g. competition for space, predator interference, recruitment facilitation), we studied the role of the presence and the intensity of these interactions for species diversity, community functioning (biomass and production) and the relationship between diversity and functioning.Taken jointly, the diverse interactions have significant effects on species diversity, whose amplitude and sign depend on the type of interactions involved and their relative abundance. They however consistently increase the slope of the relationship between diversity and functioning, suggesting that species losses might have stronger effects on community functioning than expected when ignoring the diversity of interaction types and focusing on feeding interactions only.