Functional diversity shapes the stability of reef fish biomass under global change.
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Date
2025
Authors
Mahaut, L.
Loiseau, N.
Villéger, S.
Auber, A.
Hautecoeur, C.
Maire, A.
Mellin, C.
Mouquet, N.
Stuart-Smith, R.
Violle, C.
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Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences, 2025; 292(2046):20250252-1-20250252-11
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Lucie Mahaut, Nicolas Loiseau, Sébastien Villéger, Arnaud Auber, Cyril Hautecoeur, Anthony Maire, Camille Mellin, Nicolas Mouquet, Rick Stuart-Smith, Cyrille Violle, and David Mouillot
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Abstract
Understanding how environmental and human pressures impact the temporal stability of fish community biomass on shallow reefs is essential for effective conservation and management. These pressures influence community stability directly, by affecting species’ stability and asynchrony in species’ fluctuations. However, their effects may also indirectly depend on the functional traits of the species composing the community, which remains poorly understood. Here, we examine both direct and indirect, trait-mediated effects of environmental variability and human impacts on species’ biomass stability and asynchrony in 215 Australian shallow reefs. These communities span a 10-degree sea surface temperature (SST) gradient and have been monitored over 14 years. Our results indicate higher asynchrony in tropical reefs owing to higher trait diversity and trait redundancy and higher species’ stability in colder, temperate communities owing to higher mean trophic level. Human impacts, through their negative effects on species’ stability and trait diversity, were the main destabilizing factor of fish community biomass. Temporal change in SST destabilized species’ biomass while increasing mean trophic level in fish communities. Overall, our findings show that a comprehensive analysis of the multiple facets of functional diversity is crucial to better understand and forecast the long-term stability of marine ecosystems under global change.
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© 2025 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.