Land use effects on response diversity in animal - plant interactions (Acronym: RESPONSE)

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Land use intensification is considered a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but mechanisms and consequences are poorly understood. The goal of the proposed project is to understand how response diversity – in addition to the more commonly studied biodiversity and functional diversity – changes with land use. Response diversity is the prerequisite for the resilience of ecosystem functions, suggesting that the insurance of a system against disturbance relies on functionally ‘redundant’ species that differ in their responses to environmental changes. This study will focus on interspecific variation in temperature responses and related drought stress in pollinators, herbivores and plants. Besides an increase in average temperature, variation in winter and summer temperatures are likely to increase with climate change, and periods with extreme conditions become more frequent. This variability will affect species in different ways. The core question is whether increasing land use, corresponding to decreased biodiversity, leads to lower response diversity and projected resilience in communities. The project will present the first large-scale investigation of land use impacts on functional redundancy as well as response diversity, using plant-pollinator and plant-herbivore interaction networks as target systems.