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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Habitat loss, trophic collapse, and the decline of ecosystem services
Ecology, Volume 87, No. 8, Year 2006
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Description
The provisioning of sustaining goods and services that we obtain from natural ecosystems is a strong economic justification for the conservation of biological diversity. Understanding the relationship between these goods and services and changes in the size, arrangement, and quality of natural habitats is a fundamental challenge of natural resource management. In this paper, we describe a new approach to assessing the implications of habitat loss for loss of ecosystem services by examining how the provision of different ecosystem services is dominated by species from different trophic levels. We then develop a mathematical model that illustrates how declines in habitat quality and quantity lead to sequential losses of trophic diversity. The model suggests that declines in the provisioning of services will initially be slow but will then accelerate as species from higher trophic levels are lost at faster rates. Comparison of these patterns with empirical examples of ecosystem collapse (and assembly) suggest similar patterns occur in natural systems impacted by anthropogenic change. In general, ecosystem goods and services provided by species in the upper trophic levels will be lost before those provided by species lower in the food chain. The decrease in terrestrial food chain length predicted by the model parallels that observed in the oceans following overexploitation. The large area requirements of higher trophic levels make them as susceptible to extinction as they are in marine systems where they are systematically exploited. Whereas the traditional species-area curve suggests that 50% of species are driven extinct by an order-of-magnitude decline in habitat abundance, this magnitude of loss may represent the loss of an entire trophic level and all the ecosystem services performed by the species on this trophic level. © 2006 by the the Ecological Society of America.
Authors & Co-Authors
Dobson, Andrew D.M.
United States, Princeton
Princeton University
Lodge, David M.
United States, Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
Alder, Jackie
Canada, Vancouver
The University of British Columbia
Cumming, Graeme S.
South Africa, Cape Town
University of Cape Town
Keymer, Juan Eduardo
United States, Princeton
Princeton University
McGlade, Jacqueline M.
United Kingdom, London
University College London
Mooney, Harold A.
United States, Palo Alto
Stanford University
Rusak, James A.
United States, Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
United States, Madison
University of Wisconsin-madison
Sala, Osvaldo E.
United States, Providence
Brown University
Wolters, Volkmar
Germany, Giessen
Justus-liebig-universität Gießen
Wall, Diana H.
United States, Fort Collins
Colorado State University
Winfree, Rachael
United States, Princeton
Princeton University
Xenopoulos, Marguerite A.
United States, Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
Canada, Peterborough
Trent University
Statistics
Citations: 533
Authors: 13
Affiliations: 11
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[1915:HLTCAT]2.0.CO;2
ISSN:
00129658
e-ISSN:
00129658
Research Areas
Food Security