Consumer community structure and ecosystem functioning

生物多样性已被证明影响了广泛的生态系统功能，但其潜在的机制仍存在争议。最近，多营养学观点在解释生物多样性-生态系统功能关系方面的必要性得到了强调。以往的草原生物多样性实验研究表明，植物多样性对营养和非营养相互作用具有很强的自下而上效应，从而导致消费者群落结构、相互作用频率和生态网络拓扑结构的差异。然而，消费者社区和网络结构的变化对生态系统功能的影响仍未得到探索。植物被嵌入到一个多营养相互作用的网络中，这些相互作用可能是生态系统功能的重要驱动因素。当考虑到多种生态系统功能时，多营养生物多样性-生态系统功能的观点可能特别重要。这个子项目将综合耶拿实验和相关平台的现有数据，以探索植物多样性驱动的消费者群体和网络结构变化如何影响(多个)生态系统功能。拟议的次级项目由三个工作包(工作包)组成。在WP1中，我们使用结构方程模型并建立在耶拿实验中收集的地上和地下系统的分类学和物种相互作用数据的基础上，将消费者群体结构与生态系统功能联系起来。在WP2中，我们研究了消费者群落结构变化对不同植物多样性系统中质量和能量通量的影响。这些数据和分析将第一次允许对耶拿实验的所有地块进行系统范围的比较。此外，这些分析将被用来概括世界各地关于地下质量和能量流动的不同生物多样性实验。最后，在WP3中，我们将研究土壤和植物群落历史(主要实验中的Delt-BEF实验)和消费者驱动的生态系统功能的时间变化(主要和基于特征的实验)的影响。这一分项目将分析和整合几乎所有当前分项目的数据，从而能够研究多种营养群落和网络结构的变化对多种生态系统功能的影响。据我们所知，这在陆地生态系统中很少做到，耶拿实验提供了一个全球独一无二的数据和科学合作平台，以解决生物多样性实验中的这一任务。

Biodiversity has been shown to affect a wide range of ecosystem functions, but the underlying mechanisms still are debated. Recently, the necessity of a multitrophic perspective has been highlighted to explain biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. Previous research in grassland biodiversity experiments has shown strong bottom-up effects of plant diversity on trophic and non-trophic interactions, resulting in differences in consumer community structure, interaction frequencies, and ecological network topology. However, the consequences of changing consumer community and network structure for ecosystem functioning have remained unexplored. Plants are embedded in a network of multi-trophic interactions, and these interactions likely are important drivers of ecosystem functions. A multitrophic biodiversity-ecosystem functioning perspective may be particularly important when multiple ecosystem functions are considered. This subproject will synthesize existing data from the Jena Experiment and related platforms to explore how plant diversity-driven changes in consumer community and network structure influences (multiple) ecosystem functions. The proposed subproject consists of three work packages (WPs). In WP1, we relate consumer community structure to ecosystem functioning, using structural equation modelling and building on taxonomic and species interaction data collected across above- and belowground systems within the Jena Experiment. In WP2, we study consequences of changes in consumer community structure for mass and energy fluxes in systems differing in plant diversity. These data and analyses will, for the first time, allow system-wide comparisons across all plots of the Jena Experiment. In addition, these analyses will be used to generalize across different biodiversity experiments worldwide, with respect to above-belowground mass and energy flow. Finally, in WP3, we will study effects of soil and plant community history (DeLT-BEF Experiment in the Main Experiment) and temporal changes in consumer-driven ecosystem functions (Main and Trait-Based Experiment). This subproject will analyze and integrate data from almost all current subprojects allowing to study the effects of changes in multi-trophic community and network structure on multiple ecosystem functions. To our knowledge, this has rarely been done in terrestrial ecosystems, and the Jena Experiment provides a worldwide unique platform of data and scientific collaborations to tackle this task in a biodiversity experiment.