Species diversity within morpho-functional groups drives diversity dependence in reef ecosystems

Changes in species diversity can alter reef ecosystem composition by impacting the origination and extinction of species within co-existing groups. A massive literature exists on exploring the impact of species diversity shifts through a taxonomic centered perspective. We here address the consequences of shifts in diversity using a novel morpho-functional (MF) group approach. We categorized species into MF groups based on growth forms. Our analysis demonstrates that species diversity has not been uniform across morpho-functional (MF) groups over time. Examination of coral origination and extinction rates revealed multiple pulses of rate shifts, indicating non-uniform rate changes in both processes. When addressing the potential drivers for these patterns, we found no significant correlation between species diversity increases and extinction within MF groups, thus identifying the absence of redundancy-related effects within individual groups. However, our study highlights a strong correlation between species diversity within a MF group and the rates of origination and extinction of some co-existing groups, thus, identifying morphology mediated species diversity as a potential driver for diversity dependence. We demonstrate this relationship is selective and that species capable of building biogenic habitat structures can influence the diversity and morphology of species that coexist, thus constantly modifying the reef architecture and functional potential through time. Species diversity dependence mediated through morphology shapes the reef functional composition through time.