The Role of Biodiversity
Andrew Wilby, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK
Andy Hector, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Published online: December 2008
DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0021228
Abstract
Human activities have caused widespread loss of biodiversity raising concern about the potential impact on ecosystem processes
(flows of energy and materials). A large body of recent research has shown that as species are lost from ecosystems there
is, generally, a minor impact on ecosystem processes, but that this impact increases disproportionately as species diversity
declines. Functional complementarity among species, due to variation in the ecological niches they occupy, appears to be the
main mechanism driving this pattern. Species diversity is also usually positively related to ecosystem stability, i.e. their
variation through time and the resistance and resilience to perturbation. These findings are already powerful arguments for
the conservation of biodiversity, though current research aims to increase their relevance to the real world by including
a more extensive range of ecosystems and processes, realistic food web structures, realistic (nonrandom) extinction scenarios
and larger spatial scales.
Keywords: ecosystem functioning; ecosystem stability; species diversity; conservation biology
Further Reading
Balvanera P,
Pfisterer AB,
Buchmann N et al.
(2006)
Quantifying the evidence for biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning and services.
Ecology Letters
9:
1146–1156.
Cardinale BJ,
Srivastava DS,
Emmett Duffy J et al.
(2006)
Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of trophic groups and ecosystems.
Nature
443:
989–982.
Cardinale BJ,
Wright JP,
Cadotte MW et al.
(2007)
Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time due to species complementarity: a meta‐analysis of 44 experiments.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
104:
18123–18128.
Hector A and
Bagchi R
(2007)
Biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality.
Nature
448:
188–190.
Ives AR and
Carpenter SR
(2007)
Stability and diversity of ecosystems.
Science
317:
58–62.
Kinzig A,
Tilman D and
Pacala S (eds)
(2002)
The Functional Consequences of Biodiversity: Empirical Progress and Theoretical Extensions.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Loreau M and
Hector A
(2001)
Partitioning selection and complementarity in biodiversity experiments.
Nature
412:
72–76 [erratum: 413 548].
Loreau M,
Naeem S,
Inchausti P,
Bengtsson J et al.
(2001)
Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: current knowledge and future challenges.
Science
294:
804–809.
Loreau M,
Naeem S and
Inchausti P (eds)
(2002)
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning: Synthesis and Perspectives.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Worm B,
Barbier EB,
Nicola Beaumont et al.
(2006)
Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services.
Science
314:
787–790.