Species richness and identity both determine the biomass of global reef fish communities

Jonathan S Lefcheck; Graham J Edgar; Rick D Stuart-Smith; Amanda E Bates; Conor Waldock; Simon J Brandl; Stuart Kininmonth; Scott D Ling; J Emmett Duffy; Douglas B Rasher; Aneil F Agrawal

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27212-9

Species richness and identity both determine the biomass of global reef fish communities

Nat Commun. 2021 Nov 25;12(1):6875. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27212-9.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and MarineGEO program, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, 21037, USA. LefcheckJ@si.edu.
² Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, 7001, Australia.
³ Department of Ocean Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NF, A1C 5S7, Canada.
⁴ Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8P 5C, Canada.
⁵ Landscape Ecology, Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zürich, CH-8092, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁶ Aquatic Ecology and Evolution, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
⁷ Department of Marine Science, The University of Texas at Austin, Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas, TX, 78373, USA.
⁸ School of Marine Studies, The University of South Pacific, Laucala Bay Road, Suva, Fiji Islands.
⁹ Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and MarineGEO program, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, 21037, USA.
¹⁰ Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, East Boothbay, ME, 04544, USA.
¹¹ Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 3B2, Canada.

Abstract

Changing biodiversity alters ecosystem functioning in nature, but the degree to which this relationship depends on the taxonomic identities rather than the number of species remains untested at broad scales. Here, we partition the effects of declining species richness and changing community composition on fish community biomass across >3000 coral and rocky reef sites globally. We find that high biodiversity is 5.7x more important in maximizing biomass than the remaining influence of other ecological and environmental factors. Differences in fish community biomass across space are equally driven by both reductions in the total number of species and the disproportionate loss of larger-than-average species, which is exacerbated at sites impacted by humans. Our results confirm that sustaining biomass and associated ecosystem functions requires protecting diversity, most importantly of multiple large-bodied species in areas subject to strong human influences.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Biodiversity*
Biomass*
Body Size
Conservation of Natural Resources
Coral Reefs*
Ecosystem
Fishes / classification
Fishes / physiology*
Humans

Associated data

figshare/10.25573/serc.16847029