title: Animal diversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic food webs.
abstract: Species diversity is changing globally and locally, but the complexity of ecological communities hampers a general understanding of the consequences of animal species loss on ecosystem functioning. High animal diversity increases complementarity of herbivores but also increases feeding rates within the consumer guild. Depending on the balance of these counteracting mechanisms, species-rich animal communities may put plants under top-down control or may release them from grazing pressure. Using a dynamic food-web model with body-mass constraints, we simulate ecosystem functions of 20,000 communities of varying animal diversity. We show that diverse animal communities accumulate more biomass and are more exploitative on plants, despite their higher rates of intra-guild predation. However, they do not reduce plant biomass because the communities are composed of larger, and thus energetically more efficient, plant and animal species. This plasticity of community body-size structure reconciles the debate on the consequences of animal species loss for primary productivity.
authors.affiliation: Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution (ISEM), Université Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, UMR 5554, C.C.065, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France.|Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian D
authors.initials: FD
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher, Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller Universtiy Jena, Dornburger-Strasse 159, 07743 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Brose
authors.affiliation: German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher, Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller Universtiy Jena, Dornburger-Strasse 159, 07743 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Björn C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Rall
authors.affiliation: Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, PO Box, 94248, 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands.|Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Maulbeerallee 2, 14469 Potsdam, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guill
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018533:Biomass; D058448:Biota; D049628:Body Size; D017753:Ecosystem; D020387:Food Chain; D060434:Herbivory; D008954:Models, Biological; D010944:Plants; D011235:Predatory Behavior