英国布里斯托大学的Sarah A. Alvarez和南安普顿大学的Samantha J. Gibbs等研究人员合作发现，在大规模灭绝恢复过程中，生物多样性与生态系统功能和恢复力并不相关。2019年9月25日，《自然》杂志在线发表了这项成果。
研究人员使用一个长达1300万年的纳米浮游生物时间序列，表明灭绝后的群落表现出180万年的异常波动性，然后出现了一个更稳定的平衡态群落，这显示了韧性的特征。向具有更大细胞尺寸谱新平衡态社区的过渡与碳循环恢复和功能全面的生物泵的指标相吻合。这些发现表明，生态系统恢复与生物地球化学循环之间的根本联系要长于出口生产指标所暗示的时间尺度，但远短于生物分类丰富度的恢复。随着群体稳定性和生物泵效率的重新出现，物种丰富度仍然很低，这一事实表明，生态功能而非物种数量对群体的适应力和生化功能更为重要。
据介绍，6600万年前的希克苏鲁伯陨石撞击使海洋生态系统几乎瞬间崩溃。海洋食物网基础上破坏性的缺失可能引发了所有营养级别的级联灭绝，并严重破坏了海洋的生物地球化学功能，尤其是破坏了地表与深海之间的碳循环。由于没有足够的详尽的生物数据来覆盖灭绝后的时间间隔，这限制了我们对生态系统复原力和生化功能如何恢复的理解。估计生态系统“恢复”的时长从不到100年到1000万年不等。
附：英文原文
Title: Diversity decoupled from ecosystem function and resilience during mass extinction recovery
Author: Sarah A. Alvarez, Samantha J. Gibbs, Paul R. Bown, Hojung Kim, Rosie M. Sheward, Andy Ridgwell
Issue&Volume: 2019-09-25
Abstract:
The Chicxulub bolide impact 66 million years ago drove the near-instantaneous collapse of ocean ecosystems. The devastating loss of diversity at the base of ocean food webs probably triggered cascading extinctions across all trophic levels1,2,3 and caused severe disruption of the biogeochemical functions of the ocean, and especially disrupted the cycling of carbon between the surface and deep sea4,5. The absence of sufficiently detailed biotic data that span the post-extinction interval has limited our understanding of how ecosystem resilience and biochemical function was restored; estimates6,7,8 of ecosystem ‘recovery’ vary from less than 100 years to 10 million years. Here, using a 13-million-year-long nannoplankton time series, we show that post-extinction communities exhibited 1.8 million years of exceptional volatility before a more stable equilibrium-state community emerged that displayed hallmarks of resilience. The transition to this new equilibrium-state community with a broader spectrum of cell sizes coincides with indicators of carbon-cycle restoration and a fully functioning biological pump9. These findings suggest a fundamental link between ecosystem recovery and biogeochemical cycling over timescales that are longer than those suggested by proxies of export production7,8, but far shorter than the return of taxonomic richness6. The fact that species richness remained low as both community stability and biological pump efficiency re-emerged suggests that ecological functions rather than the number of species are more important to community resilience and biochemical functions.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1590-8
Source:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1590-8
Nature：《自然》，创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：69.504
官方网址：http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接：http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html
本期文章：《自然》：Online/在线发表
