Tropical forests are recognized for their role in providing diverse ecosystem services (ESs), with carbon uptake the best recognized. The capacity of tropical forests to provide ESs is strongly linked to their enormous biodiversity. However, causal relationships between biodiversity and ESs are poorly understood. This may be because biodiversity is often translated into species richness. Here, we argue that focusing on multiple attributes of biodiversity—structure, composition, and function—will make relationships between biodiversity and ESs clearer. In this review, we discuss the ecological processes behind ESs from tropical humid and subhumid forests of South America. Our main goal is to understand the links between the ESs and those three biodiversity attributes. While supporting and regulating services relate more closely to forest structure and function, provisioning services relate more closely to forest composition and function, and cultural services are more related to structure and composition attributes. In this sense, ESs from subhumid forests (savannas) differ from those provided by the Amazon Forest, although both ecosystems are recognized as harboring tremendous biodiversity. Given this, if anthropogenic drivers of change promote a shift in the Amazon Forest toward savanna—the savannization hypothesis—the types of services provided will change, especially climate regulating services. This review emphasizes the importance of deeply understanding ecosystem structure, composition, and function to better understand the services ecosystems provide. Understanding that anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity occur through these three main attributes, it becomes easier to anticipate how humans will impact ESs.

中文翻译：

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超越碳：南美热带湿润和亚湿润森林对生态系统服务的贡献

热带森林因其在提供多样化生态系统服务 (ES) 中的作用而得到认可，其中碳吸收得到了最好的认可。热带森林提供 ES 的能力与其巨大的生物多样性密切相关。然而，人们对生物多样性和 ES 之间的因果关系知之甚少。这可能是因为生物多样性经常转化为物种丰富度。在这里，我们认为关注生物多样性的多个属性——结构、组成和功能——将使生物多样性和 ES 之间的关系更加清晰。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了来自南美洲热带潮湿和半湿润森林的 ES 背后的生态过程。我们的主要目标是了解 ES 与这三个生物多样性属性之间的联系。支持和调节服务与森林结构和功能的关系更密切，供给服务与森林的组成和功能更密切相关，文化服务更与结构和组成属性相关。从这个意义上说，来自亚湿润森林（稀树草原）的 ES 与亚马逊森林提供的 ES 不同，尽管这两个生态系统都被认为拥有巨大的生物多样性。鉴于此，如果人为的变化驱动因素促使亚马逊森林向稀树草原转变——大草原化假设——所提供的服务类型将会发生变化，尤其是气候调节服务。本综述强调深入了解生态系统结构、组成和功能以更好地了解生态系统提供的服务的重要性。