Evolutionary hot spots and temporal trends in the ecosystem services derived from plants

Background/Question/Methods

Over the past two centuries, the expansion of human populations, resource demands, and their influence on the Earth’s landscapes is the driving force behind a dramatic, planet-wide reduction in biodiversity at the level of genes, species, and ecosystems. Losses of diversity raise fundamental questions about the nature of contributions of biodiversity to human well-being. The goal of our SESYNC working group is to quantify economically the importance of the "tree-of-life" in provisioning humans with goods and services, regulating ecological and environmental processes, and donning humans with cultural and aesthetic services that enhance well-being and sustain human life. First, we examine the ecosystem services of plants, particularly tree species, in the context of their time-calibrated genetic relationships, to understand where in the tree-of-life different services are concentrated.  Second, we examine how plant species diversity and phylogenetic diversity in consumption, exports and imports in countries around the globe have changed over the last 50 years. Finally, using spatially explicit data on woody trees across the United States and the services they provide, we examine the spatial distribution of ecosystem services generated and the turnover in ecosystem services provided by distinct lineages from region to region. In doing so, we map economic valuation to both evolutionary relationships and spatial patterns, offering an explicit way to visualize and communicate results that inform ecosystem service conservation efforts.

Results/Conclusions

We find that as more ecosystem services are considered, an increasing proportion of the plant tree of life contributes to the provisioning of ecosystem services that are traded in markets. Second, we find that the overall diversity in imports, exports and consumption increases through time, but that the composition of edible plants produced and consumed in countries around the world is becoming increasingly similar through time. Finally, we find strong regional variation in ecosystem services provisioned by trees in the U.S. and that specific lineages appear as phylogenetic hotspots for specific services. Collectively, these analyses highlight the phylogenetic and spatial hotspots of ecosystem services that plants deliver globally and regionally.