ecosystem importance: insects & spiders contribute (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 18, 2024, 16:22 (4 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Friday, October 18, 2024, 16:56

Latest study including insects and spiders:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp6198?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=emai...

"Across many ecosystems, declining biodiversity leads to lower biomass and loss of other ecosystem functions. Much of the research in this area has focused on plant communities, with less attention paid to consumers, who play the important role of accumulating and synthesizing organic nutrients. Shipley et al. investigated how the diversity of insects and spiders affects community-level concentrations of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), one type of essential nutrient. They found higher biomass and higher PUFA mass in more diverse communities in both terrestrial and aquatic systems and in different land uses. In human-dominated systems, both predator biomass and PUFA biomass were lower at a given level of species richness than in natural systems, suggesting a negative shift in function." —Bianca Lopez (my bold)

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"Abstract
Human land-use intensification threatens arthropod (for example, insect and spider) biodiversity across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Insects and spiders play critical roles in ecosystems by accumulating and synthesizing organic nutrients such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). However, links between biodiversity and nutrient content of insect and spider communities have yet to be quantified. We relate insect and spider richness to biomass and PUFA-mass from stream and terrestrial communities encompassing nine land uses. PUFA-mass and biomass relate positively to biodiversity across ecosystems. In terrestrial systems, human-dominated areas have lower biomass and PUFA-mass than more natural areas, even at equivalent levels of richness. Aquatic ecosystems have consistently higher PUFA-mass than terrestrial ecosystems. Our findings reinforce the importance of conserving biodiversity and highlight the distinctive benefits of aquatic biodiversity." (my bold)

"Conclusions
Our study shows that insect and spider diversity is of fundamental importance in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and influences the availability of biomass as well as nutritionally relevant fatty acids. Our results confirm those of previous studies of biodiversity-biomass relationships for consumers and primary producers (8) while demonstrating that biodiversity also increases the availability of critical organic nutrients across ecosystems that encompass a wide range of human land uses and habitat types. We observed strong effects of diversity on nutrient availability across land-use categories, which highlights the importance of conserving biodiversity for ecosystem functioning even in human-dominated landscapes. Concerningly, urbanized terrestrial environments with low insect and spider diversity had biomass of substantially lower n-3 LC-PUFA density than more natural environments. There was a clear biomass deficit of insects and spiders in human-dominated terrestrial communities, particularly at low diversity. Additionally, the proportion of predator biomass (i.e., the more LC-PUFA–rich part of the community) to total terrestrial biomass increased at a slower rate with species richness in human-dominated areas. This suggests that predatory taxa such as beetles and spiders may be especially susceptible to anthropogenic stressors (11), which may explain why their own predators, such as birds, mammals, and reptiles, are also struggling most in human-dominated habitats."

Comment: the simplest of organisms contribute to necessary dietary nutrients. This in-depth study shows that ecosystems are important all the way to the lowest forms. Everything is here for a reason.