Congratulations! Research published in Ecology Letters: "Biodiversity Consistently Promotes Ecosystem Multifunctionality Across Multiple Temporal Scales in an Aquatic Microbial Community"

Release date: 2025.08.28

This study was conducted by Dr. Wan-Hsuan Cheng from Institute of Fisheries Science at National Taiwan University (NTU) (Ph.D. in TIGP-Earth System Science) in collaboration with Dr. Fu-Kuo Shiah from the Research Center for Environmental Changes (RCEC) at Academia Sinica, Prof. Chih-Hao Hsieh from Institute of Oceanography, NTU (also RCEC joint-appointed), Asst. Prof. Chun-Wei Chang (Ph.D. in TIGP-Earth System Science) and Prof. Chia-Ying Ko from Institute of Fisheries Science, NTU, Asst. Prof. Chao-Cheng Lai from National Taipei University of Education, and Prof. Takeshi Miki from Ryukoku University, Japan. The research was based on the long-term monitoring program at Feitsui Reservoir and was published in August 2025 in the international journal Ecology Letters (ranked 7/200 in the field of ecology).
Healthy ecosystems rely on diverse organisms providing ecosystem functions, such as organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling, toxin removal, and biomass production. Previous experimental studies under controlled conditions have shown that the random loss of species can weaken key ecosystem functions, including biomass production and carbon decomposition. However, in real-world ecosystems, the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function is more complex, as environmental fluctuations—such as rainfall, temperature, and nutrient availability—can directly influence ecosystem functions. These factors may also lead to non-random species loss, further modifying how biodiversity supports ecosystem health.
Understanding whether biodiversity can maintain ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF)—the ability to perform multiple ecological functions simultaneously—across different temporal scales is crucial for predicting ecosystem resilience under environmental change. Short-term scales reflect ecosystem responses to episodic events such as typhoons, seasonal scales capture responses to predictable annual climate cycles, and interannual scales relate to long-term climate changes or shifts in nutrient availability.
To address this, the study analyzed nine years of high-resolution monitoring data from Feitsui Reservoir. The dataset includes prokaryotic biodiversity, ecosystem multifunctionality (quantified using the decomposition rates of 31 carbon compounds), and a suite of biotic and abiotic factors, including microbial community composition, nutrient concentrations, and climate indicators. The team developed a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework to map causal pathways across temporal scales.
Results show that prokaryotic biodiversity consistently promotes carbon-related EMF across all temporal scales. In contrast, environmental drivers exhibit scale-specific effects: rainfall mainly affects short-term variation, temperature dominates seasonal scales, and phosphate concentration drives interannual variation. Importantly, biodiversity plays a key mediating role, integrating these scale-specific environmental influences to stabilize EMF across scales. For example, re-oligotrophication (declining phosphate levels) can indirectly enhance long-term EMF by increasing microbial diversity, converting the potential negative effects of nutrient reduction into ecosystem functional gains.
This study provides the first long-term, high-resolution field evidence that biodiversity can sustain ecosystem multifunctionality across multiple temporal scales. The findings deepen our understanding of biodiversity–function relationships and highlight the central role of biodiversity in buffering ecosystems against rapid environmental change. In the context of accelerating global climate change and anthropogenic disturbances, this research underscores that protecting biodiversity is not only about conserving species, but also essential for maintaining ecosystem functions and supporting sustainable human societies.




Figure 1. Standardized time series of (a) ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) for 31 carbon-related functions and (e) the log of amplicon sequence variant (ASV) richness. Each time series was decomposed into seasonal, interannual, and short-term components for (b, c, d) EMF and (f, g, h) log ASV richness, respectively.


Figure 2. Summary of the study results, showing that biodiversity consistently enhances EMF, while the effects of environmental drivers such as rainfall, temperature, and phosphate are limited to specific temporal scales. Biodiversity plays a key mediating role, integrating these diverse influences to maintain EMF across all scales, highlighting its central role in dynamic environmental conditions.
References:
Cheng, W.-H., T. Miki, C.-C. Lai, et al. 2025. Biodiversity Consistently Promotes Ecosystem Multifunctionality Across Multiple Temporal Scales in an Aquatic Microbial Community. Ecology Letters 28, no. 8: e70185. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70185

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