Editor's Choice July

Submitted by editor on 2 July 2015.

Two research papers were chosen as EC for July. The two papers have in common that they generate synthesis in community ecology by collecting large datasets to test predictions on network structure and functional organisation.

Staab et al. tested the hypothesis that plant species diversity has a stabilizing effect on higher trophic levels. While insights are predominantly generated from experimental  grasslands, they studied the structure of trophobiotic networks in a large tree diversity experiment in China.  Trophopbiosis is a symbiotic network of organisms that provide food to other species. The authors studied a specific plant-ant-Hemiptera network on 7000 trees in 146 forest plots that varied in species diversity. They found the proportion of trees with trophobiosis to increase with tree diversity. Bottom-up processes increasing the robustness of the studied ant-hemipteran associations.

Thomas Matthews and colleagues performed the first first synthetic analysis of nestedness from a functional perspective. The authors asked to which extent the area of forest fragments determined how similar birds communities are in terms of their ecological traits. The focus on the functional diversity of communities provides valuable insights on ecosystem processes and is of uttermost importance if we aim to quantify the impact of for instance habitat fragmentation on ecosystem functioning. Nestedness analyses (so studying the presence of subsets of species in different locations) is additionally an important one from a diversity conservation perspective. Over all data sets, functional nestedness was strong and especially determined by species composition, but less clear by traits per se. These results thus indicate that habitat loss will result in an ordered loss of functional traits. Extinctions and species-replacements are thus not a random process in nature. This is an important message for experimenters to take home!

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