Species abundances surpass richness effects in the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship across marine fishes
Yan, Helen F., Morais, Renato A., and Bellwood, David R. (2025) Species abundances surpass richness effects in the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship across marine fishes. Nature Communications, 16 (1). 7789.
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Abstract
High biological diversity (or biodiversity) is thought to bolster communities against disturbances, leading to higher levels of ecosystem functioning. While the biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) relationship is evident in studies equating diversity to species richness, it is still unclear which ecological mechanisms can produce different observational BEF effects. Here, we combine 7686 individual growth curves across 1480 species with 2957 local community surveys to generate a process-based estimate of biomass production to assess the BEF relationship across marine reef fishes. We find that the effects of Hill diversity emphasising abundances outpace those of species richness and community evenness on biomass productivity. In high-latitude temperate regions, species abundances and richness have parallel effects on reef fish productivity. However, in the tropics, species abundances surpass species richness in their effects on functioning. These latitudinal disparities can be explained by trade-offs in the relationship between abundance and per-capita productivity. As whole-community productivity remains relatively stable across most of the diversity gradient, these trade-offs are presumably driven by metabolic constraints on growth and body size imposed by warmer temperatures. It appears that biodiversity can only support ecosystem functioning to a limited extent and environmental stressors likely limit the biomass production of marine fishes globally.
| Item ID: | 87728 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2041-1723 |
| Copyright Information: | ©The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Feb 2026 04:54 |
| FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180504 Marine biodiversity @ 100% |
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