{"id":4350,"date":"2023-04-27T13:27:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T13:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/?p=4350"},"modified":"2023-04-27T14:07:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:07:05","slug":"reconsidering-functional-redundancy-in-biodiversity-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/2023\/04\/27\/reconsidering-functional-redundancy-in-biodiversity-research\/","title":{"rendered":"New publication from Eisenhauer et al. in npj Biodiversity: Reconsidering functional redundancy in biodiversity research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"justify\">A key question in ecological research is whether biodiversity is  important for ecosystem functioning. After approximately three decades  of empirical studies on this topic, it is clear that biodiversity  promotes the magnitude and stability of ecosystem functioning. However,  the majority of early biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF)  experiments concluded that there is a saturating relationship between  biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, seemingly supporting the \u2018<em>redundancy hypothesis<\/em>\u2019  of biodiversity. This hypothesis may suggest that many species can be  lost from an ecosystem before any changes in functioning can be detected  under the current environmental conditions. Here, we argue that the  term functional redundancy (1) may have been overused from an ecological  perspective and (2) can be dangerous and misleading in scientific  communication. Rather, we propose to use the term \u2018<em>functional similarity<\/em>\u2019,  which better highlights the unique contributions of all coexisting  species to ecosystem functioning, gradients in niche overlap and has a  less negative connotation. In a world where increasing anthropogenic  stressors are accelerating biodiversity change and loss and thus  threatening ecosystem integrity, important political and societal  decisions must be taken to combat the joint climate and biodiversity  crisis. We should therefore reconsider and carefully choose terminology  in biodiversity science for value-neutral communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img src=\"https:\/\/media.springernature.com\/lw685\/springer-static\/image\/art%3A10.1038%2Fs44185-023-00015-5\/MediaObjects\/44185_2023_15_Fig1_HTML.png\" alt=\"figure 1\"\/><figcaption> The data stems from Web of Science searches for Biodiv* AND Redundan*,  and Biodiv* AND Ecosystem Function* on 6 September 2022. Five-year  intervals are illustrated from 1996\u20132020. Although absolute numbers of  publications are not comparable between 2021\u20132022 and the 5-year  intervals, the proportion of \u2018<em>redundancy papers<\/em>\u2019 was also at ~11%  in these two years. The reader should note that we did not explore how  the term redundancy was used in this literature, as this was beyond the  scope of our <em>Comment<\/em>. <br><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify\">Reference:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify\">Eisenhauer, N., J. Hines, F. T. Maestre, and M. C. Rillig. 2023. Reconsidering functional redundancy in biodiversity research. npj Biodiversity 2:1\u20134. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s44185-023-00015-5. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A key question in ecological research is whether biodiversity is important for ecosystem functioning. After approximately three decades of empirical studies on this topic, it is clear that biodiversity promotes&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4350"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4358,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions\/4358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}