RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Human activities influence the direction and magnitude of local biodiversity change over time
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 162362
DO 10.1101/162362
A1 Jillian C Dunic
A1 Robin Elahi
A1 Marc J. S. Hensel
A1 Patrick J. Kearns
A1 Mary I. O’Connor
A1 Daniel Acuña
A1 Aaron Honig
A1 Alexa R. Wilson
A1 Jarrett E. K. Byrnes
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/12/162362.abstract
AB In recent decades, environmental drivers of community change have been associated with changes in biodiversity from local to global scales. Here we evaluate the role of anthropogenic drivers in marine ecosystems as drivers of change in local species richness with a meta-analysis of a novel dataset of temporal change in species richness. We paired biodiversity data from 144 sites with large-scale drivers derived from geospatial databases: human cumulative impacts, sea surface temperature change, nutrient loading, and invasion potential. Three specific drivers (nutrient inputs, rate of linear temperature change, and non-native species invasion potential) explained patterns in local species richness change. We show that these drivers have opposing effects on biodiversity trends, and in some cases, contrasting directions of change can offset each other to yield observations of no net change across localities. Further, long-term studies reveal different effects of drivers that are not observed in short-term studies. These findings begin to explain high variability observed in species diversity trends at local scales. We suggest that local species diversity change is a predictable phenomenon and that observations of no net change across many time-series can be explained when the contrasting effects of human impacts are considered.