H2020 DRYFUN Project: Linking plant functional diversity with ecosystem multifunctionality in arid systems around the world

Type Project
Status Filled
Execution 2015 -2017
Assigned Budget 170.121,6 €
Scope Europeo
Autonomous community Madrid, Comunidad de
Main source of financing Horizon 2020
Project website https://doi.org/10.3030/656035

Description

The data collected from the standardized protocol will provide important insights into the role of functional diversity in ecosystem multifunctionality in global drylands and will improve the predictability of the consequences of global environmental change on ecosystem structure and functioning.

The ongoing and recently published outcomes of objectives (ii) and (iii) are particularly relevant for incorporating functional diversity into management recommendations, in particular by providing targets and guidelines for the development of quantitative and predictive ecology. The outcomes of objective (iii) can be:

Use trait-based restoration ecology and conservation to mitigate the impact of global drivers of change on multifunctionality.
To provide a way to include the effect of biodiversity and its underlying mechanisms on CNP cycles in global vegetation models.

Description of activities

"The applicant has successfully completed/provided the following milestones and deliverables:

Following the work plan (Milestone 1), the applicant has successfully established the detailed and standardized protocol for trait measurements. The DRYFUN project protocol has been directly connected to the BIODESERT consortium (ERC Confirmatory Grant led by F.T. Maestre), and is one of BIODESERT's core tasks. The applicant serves on the steering and publication committees. The protocol has been sent to research groups in the 29 countries participating in the BIODESERT project.
The applicant assessed the importance of climatic and soil conditions in the functional diversity of drylands. This work fulfills objective (i) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 7). The work has been accepted in the Journal of Ecology (IF: 5.52).
The applicant is participating in a project to assess the effect of indirect interactions on plant functional diversity in the world's drylands. This work will fulfill objective (i) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 7). The work has been submitted to the Journal of Ecology (IF: 5.52).
The applicant has used existing functional diversity data from the BIOCOM project. He assessed the importance of functional diversity within species in drylands and their response to abiotic processes. This work fulfills objective (ii) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 8). The work has been accepted in the Journal of Ecology (IF: 5.52).
The applicant assessed the impact of functional diversity on multiple ecosystem functions in global drylands. This work fulfills objective (iii) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 10). The work has been accepted in Nature Ecology and Evolution (part of the Nature group).
The applicant was part of a project to assess the effect of functional diversity of soil plants and fungi on the fertility of the world's drylands. This work fulfills objective (iii) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 10). The work has been accepted in the Journal of Ecology (IF: 5.52).
The applicant evaluated the effect of ecological and biogeographic factors on the phylogenetic structure of plant communities in the arid Trans-Himalayas. This work fulfills objective (iv) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 11). The work has just been accepted into the Perspective in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (IF: 3.12).
The applicant is currently evaluating the impact of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity on the functioning of the world's dryland ecosystems. This work is ongoing and will fulfill objective (iv) of the DRYFUN project (Milestone 11). The work will be submitted to PNAS.
The applicant also participated in two parallel projects. The first project aimed to provide guidelines for calculating and using trait data to accurately measure the functional diversity of multiple organisms. The second project aimed to test the processes involved in grassland assembly by assessing niche occupancy using plant functional traits. These two projects have been accepted by PlosOne (IF: 3.06) and the Journal of Ecology (IF: 5.52).
The applicant participated in three international conferences. In 2016, he participated in the Ecosummit conference, where he was invited to chair the "Dryland Ecology" session, the SFE conference in 2016, and the MEDECOS meeting in 2017. These projects meet milestones 5 and 9.
The applicant facilitated dissemination: a website that will serve the new ongoing global dryland traits dataset, a press release on the public websites of INRA and CNRS. All the data used are published in the public repository Figshare.

Contextual description

The relationship between plant functional diversity and ecosystem functioning has been hotly debated, and previous research has demonstrated the direct effects of community functional structure on ecosystem processes. However, previous studies have not considered indirect effects through changes in biotic interactions, and this is an emerging and crucial challenge for community and ecosystem ecologists. The DRYFUN project aims to assess the ultimate effects of biotic interactions on ecosystem processes in the world's drylands by coupling a multi-trait approach with an observational database of 123 sites distributed across all continents except Antarctica.

Its main objectives are: (i) to test the importance of abiotic and biotic processes for community structure in global drylands, (ii) to assess the importance of trait variability within and between species for functional diversity, (iii) to evaluate the direct and indirect impact of dryland functional diversity on ecosystem multifunctionality (i.e., the provision of several ecosystem processes simultaneously; multifunctionality hereafter) at multiple spatial scales, and (iv) to explore the importance of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversities on multifunctionality.

The DRYFUN project is a unique opportunity to test the universal impact of functional diversity on dryland ecosystem functioning and provide data for developing relevant dryland management and restoration strategies. My results highlight the importance of plant diversity for the functioning of the world's drylands. This basic result may have important implications for humans in the context of global environmental change.

My results are premised on the ability of plant diversity to maintain a high level of ecosystem functioning (i.e., to optimize the overall functioning) of ecosystems highly threatened by desertification. Furthermore, these results can be used to assess the functional consequences of biodiversity loss in dryland ecosystems, to test the prioritization of diversity in relation to specific ecosystem functions, and to guide management efforts aimed at maintaining key ecosystem services linked to soil productivity and fertility.

Results

Drylands represent 45% of the Earth's land surface. Combating land degradation and desertification has become a priority in these regions, and vegetation attributes are expected to play a crucial role in this endeavor. However, to implement effective countermeasures, stakeholders must understand all the factors at play. As Dr. Fernando Maestre, DRYFUN project coordinator on behalf of the Rey Juan Carlos University, explains, biotic interactions constitute a major gap in our current understanding of how the dryland environment functions. "The interactions that arise between species, such as competition for resources and mutualisms, largely determine the key attributes of natural ecosystems, such as the number of species, the diversity of their genes, and the functional attributes they contain. Despite their recognized importance, very few studies have attempted to assess how biotic interactions ultimately influence the functioning of natural ecosystems, particularly in drylands."

The problem was essentially a lack of adequate data, an issue recently addressed by the ERC-funded BIOCOM project. From 2006 to 2013, the BIOCOM consortium collected detailed information on the abiotic factors, structure, and functioning of 236 dryland ecosystems from every continent except Antarctica, making it the first standardized study of its kind. A mathematical model of dryland functioning With DRYFUN, Dr. Maestre and his team combined BIOCOM results with data they collected or from databases on key functional attributes of plant species, such as plant height and leaf characteristics—a task led by Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinguet, a postdoctoral researcher leading DRYFUN, and Nicolas Gross, an INRA researcher who has been working in Dr. Maestre’s lab for two years. These data were analyzed using statistical tools commonly used in fields such as astrophysics and macroeconomics, but which had never been applied to ecology. "We found a mathematical relationship between key trends in the distribution of plant functional attributes (traits) that cannot be explained by chance.

This relationship predicted that a surprisingly high trait diversity within dryland plant communities was associated with a local maximization of the provision of multiple functions related to plant productivity and nutrient cycling (multifunctionality)," explains Dr. Maestre. "The mathematical relationship identified in our project is also important because it can be used to quantify how much trait diversity is required to maximize multifunctionality at the local level." Specifically, the DRYFUN findings indicate that trait distribution can be used to predict the functional consequences of biodiversity loss in terrestrial ecosystems.

As such, they can guide management efforts aimed at maintaining key ecosystem services linked to soil productivity and fertility. The database and statistical methodologies developed within the DRYFUN framework are currently being used within the European Research Council (ERC)-funded BIODESERT project. The project, which will run until December 2020, aims to improve scientific understanding of the functioning and resilience of drylands to the main drivers of desertification.

Coordinators

UNIVERSIDAD REY JUAN CARLOS

Other links

H2020 DRYFUN Project: Linking plant functional diversity with ecosystem multifunctionality in arid systems around the world

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