Université de Fribourg

Selective extinction against redundant species buffers functional diversity

Pimiento, Catalina ; Bacon, Christine D. ; Silvestro, Daniele ; Hendy, Austin ; Jaramillo, Carlos ; Zizka, Alexander ; Meyer, Xavier ; Antonelli, Alexandre

In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2020, vol. 287, no. 2020-1931, p. 20201162

The extinction of species can destabilize ecological processes. A way to assess the ecological consequences of species loss is by examining changes in functional diversity. The preservation of functional diversity depends on the range of ecological roles performed by species, or functional richness, and the number of species per role, or functional redundancy. However, current knowledge is...