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Climate change and biodiversity loss are expected to simultaneously affect
ecosystems, however research on how each driver mediates the effect of the
other has been limited in scope. The multiple stressor framework
emphasizes non-additive effects, but biodiversity may also buffer the
effects of climate change, and climate change may alter which mechanisms
underlie biodiversity-function relationships. Here, we performed an
experiment using tank bromeliad ecosystems to test the various ways that
rainfall changes and litter diversity may jointly determine ecological
processes. Litter diversity and rainfall changes interactively affected
multiple functions, but how depended on the process measured. High litter
diversity buffered the effects of altered rainfall on detritivore
communities, evidence of insurance against impacts of climate change.
Altered rainfall affected the mechanisms by which litter diversity
influenced decomposition, reducing the importance of complementary
attributes of species (“complementarity effects”), and resulting in an
increasing dependence on the maintenance of specific species (“dominance
effects”). Finally, altered rainfall conditions prevented litter diversity
from fuelling methanogenesis, because such changes in rainfall reduced
microbial activity by 58%. Together, these results demonstrate that the
effects of climate change and biodiversity loss on ecosystems cannot be
understood in isolation and interactions between these stressors can be
multifaceted.
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