Data from: Accumulating time lags across biodiversity levels following land-use change

Delayed biodiversity responses to environmental changes occur from genes
over communities to ecosystem functions. Despite growing insights into the
mechanisms governing both the magnitude and time lags of biodiversity
responses at individual levels of biodiversity, how interactions among
levels of biodiversity affect ecosystem-wide inertia in response to an
environmental forcing event remains a largely unanswered question. As
several sources causing time lags interact within and across multiple
biodiversity levels, we hypothesize these mechanisms control how time lags
at one biodiversity level may cascade into increasingly extended lags at
higher biodiversity levels. We analysed empirical data on genetic
diversity, species distributions, community diversity, and functional
diversity in semi-natural grassland patches for the existence and length
of lagged responses across biodiversity levels in response to 165 years of
land-use change. Time lags were present at all tested biodiversity levels
(from genes to traits), none yet in equilibrium with the current
landscape. Significant variation in delays among individual species
possibly controlled by delayed loss in genetic diversity may affect the
scale of future biodiversity losses at the community level. Functional
diversity appeared to have the most delayed response, likely due to high
functional redundancy in species-rich grassland communities. Synthesis:
Species identity seems central in governing the observed delays at each
level of biodiversity, from genetic to functional diversity. In
particular, species identity controls the slowest responses at the genetic
level, potentially leading to accumulating underestimations of the size
and duration of time lags at species, community and functional diversity
levels compared to average community responses. Conservation and
restoration actions must therefore anticipate the potentially systematic
underestimation of time lags in biodiversity responses following habitat
change to ensure their effectiveness in halting biodiversity loss.