Unraveling metacommunity functional structure – a global synthesis

Amidst a sixth mass extinction, understanding the drivers and implications of biodiversity loss is paramount to guide conservation efforts. Metacommunity ecology combines local (e.g., environmental filtering and biotic interactions) and regional (e.g., dispersal and environmental heterogeneity) processes to understand patterns of species abundance, occurrence, composition, and diversity across scales of space and time. However, even if species interact with the environment via their functional traits, metacommunity ecology currently lacks a consistent functional trait perspective. Moreover, empirical studies typically assume that processes act equally across species and sites, disregarding that these can vary widely in how they contribute to metacommunity structure. Therefore, studying species and site contributions to metacommunities through a functional lens will not only advance theory but also allow targeting species, sites, or regions that play a key role in maintaining the functional diversity of metacommunities. METAFOR main study questions include: (i) Are functional dimensions useful to describe metacommunity patterns? (ii) How do species and site contributions to functional diversity relate to metacommunity processes? (iii) What are the implications of climate and land use change for functional trait dimensions of metacommunities? To these ends, I will analyze over 150 biotic datasets distributed globally. The project will give insights into the functional dimensions of metacommunity patterns and shows the species and site contributions to functional diversity in metacommunities. It also reveals how land use intensity and climate change affect metacommunity functionality. The methods developed in METAFOR will allow researchers to investigate ecosystem functions that are currently threatened and to target species and sites that contribute the most to such functions, paving the way for more efficient conservation and biomonitoring actions. METAFOR results contribute to scientific renewal since functional traits allow researchers to generalize findings across communities and ecosystems more efficiently than traditionally used taxonomic composition.