2018 ESA Annual Meeting (August 5 -- 10)

PS 7-77 - Functional diversity of tree species assures diversity of forest bounties

Monday, August 6, 2018
ESA Exhibit Hall, New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
Chihiro Oka1, Masahiro Aiba1, Yusuke Onoda2, Hiroko Kurokawa3 and Tohru Nakashizuka4, (1)Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, (2)Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, (3)Department of Vegetation Science, Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan, (4)Research Department, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan
Background/Question/Methods

In some ecosystem functions/services related to carbon and nutrient cycling, functional diversity rather than species richness per se play a more essential role for the multifunctionality. This is at least partly because different species contribute to different ecosystem services based on their functional characteristics. However, it remains unclear whether such a biodiversity effect is consistent throughout a variety of ecosystem services. In this study, we focused on 15 kinds of benefits of 169 tree species common in Japan to cover wide aspects of ecosystem services (e.g. edible as a mountain vegetable, beauty of autumn color, and importance as a motif in a traditional poem). We investigated (ⅰ) whether functional diversity assures diversity of benefits provided by a local community and (ii) if so, whether the relationship is explained by functionally non‐random distributions of beneficial attributes among species. Vegetation survey data for 3710 tree communities throughout Japan was used for our analysis. We calculated diversity of benefits potentially provided by each community based on the actual species–benefit relationships judged from existing literature. Then importance of non‐random distributions of beneficial attributes among species for the observed relationship between biodiversity and multifunctionality was examined by randomization of the species–benefit relationships.

Results/Conclusions

Multifunctionality of a community, i.e. diversity of benefits provided by a community, increased with species richness. Functional diversity had positive effects on multifunctionality even when the effect of species richness was conditioned. Multifunctionality of community increased with species richness even after randomization of the species–benefit relationships and the correlations between species richness and multifunctionality were stronger than that before randomization. However, the effects of functional diversity were significantly weaker than the actual relationships and even negative in some cases. These results suggest that functional diversity plays an essential role for multifunctionality of a tree community.