Biodiversity ecosystem functioning research in freshwater phytoplankton: A comprehensive review of trait-based studies

In an effort to reach a clearer mechanistic understanding of the influence of biological diversity on ecosystem functioning, research in the field is increasingly applying a trait-based approach. In this comprehensive review, I searched for and analyzed studies that focused on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) using a trait-based approach in freshwater phytoplankton from lentic systems (lakes, ponds, reservoirs). I found that this type of studies is very rare and included a plethora of traits, diversity metrics, statistical analyses and study locations that contributed to the high variability in the results they obtained. Overall, trait-based diversity is not a very good predictor of ecosystem functioning in freshwater lentic ecosystems. Null relationships between trait-based diversity and ecosystem functioning in freshwater lentic systems were the more frequent outcome. When significant, the amount of variation in ecosystem functioning explained by trait-based diversity was small. Still, trait-based research remains a promising approach to increase the mechanistic understanding of BEF relationships. For this purpose, studies directly testing the underlying mechanistic rationale, exploring diversity effects on the temporal stability of ecosystem functions, including multiple functions at a time, focusing more in cell size and shape and confirming the relative importance of individual trait variation for ecosystem functioning are needed.