MultiTroph Z2

MultiTroph Data management and synthesis

The overall objectives of Z2 are to ensure efficient data management and promote synergies in the processing of data among MultiTroph’s SPs through extensive services provided by training courses and the maintenance and ongoing development of the BEF-China data portal, as well as supporting data and code open access publication strategy, as well as to develop early synthesis connecting MultiTroph’s SPs based on available and newly generated data that link up network structure, multidiversity, and multifunctionality. Multidiversity assembly and trophic interactions need time to establish. For this reason, including previous data from BEF-China is essential. The main aims and guiding hypotheses are: Continue and update data portal In preparation for MultiTroph, we have updated and migrated the BEFdata portal from Leipzig to Halle University (https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/). Halle University has provided the required server capacity and technical surrounding to run the portal. Among other features, the BEFportal now has a flexible design and can work with screens of all sizes (e.g. tablet, mobile phone). In addition, we have implemented an improved data search. On Github, about 30,000 lines of code have been added and large parts of the old code have been rewritten (https://github.com/befdata/befdata). While the data of the BEF-China projects (the former Research Unit FOR 891 “BEF-China”, the TreeDì graduate school and numerous Chinese projects) are curated together, their access and re-use is organized in different subprojects, allowing separate access rules and proposals. The main aim (1) of MultiTroph’s data management is to provide data management along the entire data lifecycle. However, as the structure of the database has been updated, we will focus on improving functionality, such as developing tools for extracting and merging data for synthesis datasets, thus leveraging reproducible scientific analyses. We will work closely with the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) initiative, particularly with NFDI4Biodiversity (https://www.nfdi4biodiversity.org/) focusing on biodiversity data, to which we are connected through iDiv. (2) We will provide reproducible workflows into which the particular data analyses will be integrated. (3) We will offer regular training activities on using the data portal to support all activities of the data life cycle (e.g. data generation, documentation, building pipelines, archiving and publishing). Finally (4), we will work to combine paper proposals, which are a key element in BEFdata, with applications that are required for working on the BEF-China platform and which are administered by the BEFChina steering committee. Paper proposals offer a safe environment to share data to propagate data ownership through scientific workflows. Analyse multitrophic network structure and multidiversity We anticipate that tree diversity effects on multidiversity of higher trophic levels are to a large part indirect and mediated by the structure of interaction networks linking producer and higher trophic levels. We hypothesize that increasing tree species richness increases trophic complementarity and affects further network characteristics through specialization of network partners. We expect increasing specialisation with increasing producer richness as a general mechanism of trophic networks, which in turn promotes higher trophic level multidiversity. However, differences may be expected for antagonistic versus mutualistic networks, and more mobile groups (with their ability to utilize resources across larger spatial scales) and higher trophic levels (often less affected by changes in plant diversity) are hypothesized to show less pronounced relationships with the manipulated tree communities. Link network characteristics and multidiversity to ecosystem (multi)functionality In general, we expect individual ecosystem functions and ecosystem multifunctionality to be promoted by higher diversity across trophic levels. We hypothesize that cascading effects of tree diversity via interaction network structure and multidiversity will also play important roles in modifying process rates and the stability of ecosystem functions. The degree of generalization and specialization in the interaction webs will strongly determine the outcome of such cascading effects: specialization of network partners increases the importance of trophic complementarity in explaining ecosystem functioning. Trophic complementarity may increase with increasing multitrophic diversity. In contrast, a strong dominance of generalist (highly connected) species might lead to less pronounced effects of diversity, as generalists might maintain high functionality by occupying a broader niche space already at lower diversity. Finally, we expect network structure to also influence the variability of ecosystem functions, with particularly functional redundancy within the networks (e.g. high average number of consumers per host, i.e. community-level vulnerability) reducing variability in functions across space and/or time.

2024-02-29

2024-02-29