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by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-16
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This study found that copepod functional diversity facets respond to species richness and correlate with primary production, biomass, and carbon export efficiency, with climate change projected to increase trait homogenization and decrease these ecosystem functions.
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by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-16
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This preprint studied global-scale spatial patterns in copepod community functional diversity by combining species distribution model–derived community composition with copepod functional traits and measures of ecosystem functioning, and then projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change. It found multiple facets of functional diversity (functional richness, divergence, dispersion, evenness, and trait dissimilarity) related to species richness in differing directions, while ecosystem functioning metrics such as primary production, mesozooplankton biomass, and carbon export efficiency decreased with higher functional richness/divergence/dispersion. The paper caveats that these relationships reflect emergent covariance based on modeled community composition and global indicators rather than direct experimental manipulation, and it projects that climate change may drive trait homogenization that could reduce mesozooplankton biomass and carbon export efficiency. The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.
Abstract
Copepods are a major group of the mesozooplankton and thus a key part of marine ecosystems worldwide. Their fitness and life strategies are determined by their functional traits which allow different species to exploit various ecological niches. The range of functional traits expressed in a community define its functional diversity (FD), which can be used to investigate how communities utilize resources and shape ecosystem processes. However, the spatial patterns of copepod FD and their relation to ecosystem functioning remain poorly understood on a global scale. Here, we use estimates of copepod community composition derived from species distribution models in combination with functional traits and indicators of ecosystem functioning to investigate the distribution of multiple facets of copepod FD, their relationships with species richness and ecosystem processes. We also project how anthropogenic climate change will impact the facets of copepod FD. We find that the facets of FD respond to species richness with variable strength and directions: functional richness, divergence and dispersion increase with species richness whereas functional evenness and trait dissimilarity decrease. We find that primary production, mesozooplankton biomass and carbon export efficiency decrease with species richness, functional richness, divergence and dispersion. This suggests that ecosystem functioning may be disproportionally influenced by the traits of a few dominant species in line with the mass-ratio hypothesis. Furthermore, climate change is projected to promote trait homogenization globally, which may decrease mesozooplankton biomass and carbon export efficiency globally. The emergent covariance patterns between FD and ecosystem functions we find here strongly call for better integrating FD measurements into field studies and across scales to understand the effects of changing zooplankton biodiversity on marine ecosystem functioning.
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This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.
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Copepods are a major group of the mesozooplankton and thus a key part of marine ecosystems worldwide. Their fitness and life strategies are determined by their functional traits which allow different species to exploit various ecological niches. The range of functional traits expressed in a community define its functional diversity (FD), which can be used to investigate how communities utilize resources and shape ecosystem processes. However, the spatial patterns of copepod FD and their relation to ecosystem functioning remain poorly understood on a global scale. Here, we use estimates of copepod community composition derived from species distribution models in combination with functional traits and indicators of ecosystem functioning to investigate the distribution of multiple facets of copepod FD, their relationships with species richness and ecosystem processes. We also project how anthropogenic climate change will impact the facets of copepod FD. We find that the facets of FD respond to species richness with variable strength and directions: functional richness, divergence and dispersion increase with species richness whereas functional evenness and trait dissimilarity decrease. We find that primary production, mesozooplankton biomass and carbon
export efficiency decrease with species richness, functional richness, divergence and dispersion. This suggests that ecosystem functioning may be disproportionally influenced by the traits of a few dominant species in line with the mass-ratio hypothesis. Furthermore, climate change is projected to promote trait homogenization globally, which may decrease mesozooplankton biomass and carbon export efficiency globally. The emergent covariance patterns between FD and ecosystem functions we find here strongly call for better integrating FD measurements into field studies and across scales to understand the effects of changing zooplankton biodiversity on marine ecosystem functioning.
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2J03Q
Biodiversity, Marine Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Zooplankton, functional diversity, Ecosystem functioning, climate change, global ocean, Copepods
Published: 2024-07-23 08:56
CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Conflict of interest statement:
None.
Data and Code Availability Statement:
The copepod species occurrences data used to train the species distribution models are publicly available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5101349). The copepod species functional traits table is available as Supplementary Table S1. All R codes are accessible on the GitHub account of F.B. (https://github.com/benfabio/Global-cOpepoD-functionaL-diversitY).
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English
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