Broadly inflicted stressors can cause ecosystem thinning.

ABSTRACT: Many anthropogenic stressors broadly inflict mortality or reduce fecundity, including habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, invasive species, and multispecies harvesting. Here, we show-in four analytical models of interspecies competition-that broadly inflicted stressors disproportionately cause competitive exclusions within groups of ecologically similar species. As a result, we predict that ecosystems become progressively thinner-that is, they have progressively less functional redundancy-as broadly inflicted stressors become progressively more intense. This may negatively affect the temporal stability of ecosystem functions, but it also buffers ecosystem productivity against stress by favoring species less sensitive to the stressors. Our main result follows from the wea

SUBMITTER: Burgess MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6853792 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature