PIFI访问教授学术报告　　 

　　报告题目：Measuring more of biodiversity: species loss, functional trait shifts and the maintenance of ecosystem services in the face of global environmental change　　 

　　报告专家：Prof Raphael Didham　　 

　　报告时间：2016年6月15日上午9:30　　 

　　报告地点：中国科学院动物研究所C101　　 

　　联系人：朱朝东，zhucd@ioz.ac.cn/13426118244

　　报告摘要：Success or failure in the global challenge of cataloguing all life on Earth will depend to a large extent on our ability to survey and identify the countless millions of arthropod species that remain undescribed. On the one hand, advances in high-throughput technologies hold great promise for a more rapid and complete understanding of arthropod biodiversity, but only if they can be integrated effectively with existing taxonomic and ecological initiatives. On the other hand, the problem is there is more to biodiversity than just an inventory of species names. It is equally important to understand the ecological roles of species within ecosystems, and the potential cascading effects of their loss on communities and ecosystems. What is urgently needed is a more ecologically-structured approach to biodiversity monitoring that can deliver greater mechanistic understanding of the impacts of global environmental change. There is strong evidence for both synergistic interactions between multiple drivers of global change, and community context-dependence in the responses of multiple interacting species to biodiversity loss. Linking global change processes to species loss, phylogenetic- and functional-trait shifts among species (changes in ‘response trait’ diversity), and the outcome for functional processes (resulting from changes in ‘effect trait’ diversity) could provide emergent principles about global change impacts that transcend local case-specific study systems. Yet at the same time these approaches would still fulfil the basic objectives of ‘traditional’ biodiversity monitoring programmes by surveying and inventorying new species. The dual goals of cataloguing life on Earth and better understanding the mechanistic pathways through global change effects occur, are both important future challenges for ecologists, and underpin any ability we might have to reverse anthropogenic impacts and facilitate functional recovery of ecosystems during habitat restoration.