ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Functional rarity and evenness are key facets of biodiversity to boost multifunctionality.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Even evenness is important: the direct and mediating effects of species abundances for ecosystem services.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Leveraging remote sensing and crowd-sourced biodiversity data for enhanced plant functional trait mapping.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Estimating species commonness and prevalence through unsupervised methods.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Thresholds of functional trait diversity driven by land use intensification.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Ground-Dwelling Spider Community Responses to Forest Management in a Mediterranean Oak Forest.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Identifying ecological thresholds from functional traits for optimal ecosystem management.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Pigeon pea-mediated soil microbial shifts improve agroecosystem multifunctionality in long-term maize-palisade grass intercropping.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Emergent Relationships Between the Functional Diversity of Marine Planktonic Copepods and Ecosystem Functioning in the Global Ocean.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Unveiling the effects of landscape-fire interactions on functional diversity in a Southern European mountain.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2025Article
- Comprehensive tools for ecological restoration of soils foster sustainable use and resilience of agricultural land.Communications biology · 2024Review
- Aboveground and belowground biodiversity have complementary effects on ecosystem functions across global grasslands.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Relationships of stomatal morphology to the environment across plant communities.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Temporal change in functional rarity in marine fish assemblages.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Direct and indirect effects of dominant plants on ecosystem multifunctionality.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Functionally distinct tree species support long-term productivity in extreme environments.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Variation Patterns of Functional Trait Moments Along Geographical Gradients and Their Environmental Determinants in the Subtropical Evergreen Broadleaved Forests.Frontiers in plant science · 2021Article
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18 authors.
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Abstract
The functional traits of organisms within multispecies assemblages regulate biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning. Yet how traits should assemble to boost multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously (multifunctionality) remains poorly explored. In a multibiome litter experiment covering most of the global variation in leaf trait spectra, we showed that three dimensions of functional diversity (dispersion, rarity, and evenness) explained up to 66% of variations in multifunctionality, although the dominant species and their traits remained an important predictor. While high dispersion impeded multifunctionality, increasing the evenness among functionally dissimilar species was a key dimension to promote higher multifunctionality and to reduce the abundance of plant pathogens. Because too-dissimilar species could have negative effects on ecosystems, our results highlight the need for not only diverse but also functionally even assemblages to promote multifunctionality. The effect of functionally rare species strongly shifted from positive to negative depending on their trait differences with the dominant species. Simultaneously managing the dispersion, evenness, and rarity in multispecies assemblages could be used to design assemblages aimed at maximizing multifunctionality independently of the biome, the identity of dominant species, or the range of trait values considered. Functional evenness and rarity offer promise to improve the management of terrestrial ecosystems and to limit plant disease risks.
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