The diversity of biotic interactions complements functional and phylogenetic facets of biodiversity

Taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversities are important facets of biodiversity. Studying them together has improved our understanding of community dynamics, ecosystem functioning, and conservation values.1-3 In contrast to species, traits, and phylogenies, the diversity of biotic interactions has so far been largely ignored as a biodiversity facet in large-scale studies. This neglect represents a crucial shortfall because biotic interactions shape community dynamics, drive important aspects of ecosystem functioning,4-7 provide services to humans, and have intrinsic conservation value.8,9 Hence, the diversity of interactions can provide crucial and unique information with respect to other diversity facets. Here, we leveraged large datasets of trophic interactions, functional traits, phylogenies, and spatial distributions of >1,000 terrestrial vertebrate species across Europe at a 10-km resolution. We computed the diversity of interactions (interaction diversity [ID]) in addition to functional diversity (FD) and phylogenetic diversity (PD). After controlling for species richness, surplus and deficits of ID were neither correlated with FD nor with PD, thus representing unique and complementary information to the commonly studied facets of diversity. A three-dimensional mapping allowed for visualizing different combinations of ID-FD-PD simultaneously. Interestingly, the spatial distribution of these diversity combinations closely matched the boundaries between 10 European biogeographic regions and revealed new interaction-rich areas in the European Boreal region and interaction-poor areas in Central Europe. Our study demonstrates that the diversity of interactions adds new and ecologically relevant information to multifacetted, large-scale diversity studies with implications for understanding eco-evolutionary processes and informing conservation planning.