Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 335; no. 6065; pp. 174 - 175
• Main Author: Midgley, Guy F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington American Association for the Advancement of Science 13-01-2012; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Agricultural soils; Arid zones; Biodiversity; Desert soils; Ecological function; Ecosystems; PERSPECTIVES; Plants; Provisioning ecosystem services; Socioeconomic factors; Soil ecology; Species
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1217245

A study of drylands across the world highlights the importance of species richness for ecosystem function.
How is the biodiversity within an ecosystem related to the ecosystem's function? Quantifying and understanding this relationship—the biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) (
1
)—is important because socio-economic development is almost always accompanied by the loss of natural habitat and species (
2
). Short-term economic gains may thus trump longer-term benefits for human society, creating vulnerabilities that could be avoided or corrected with enough knowledge about the role of biodiversity. Erosion of biodiversity at local and regional scales may also reduce resilience at larger spatial scales as a result of degradation of ecosystem function (
3
). On page 214 of this issue, Maestre
et al.
(
4
) report an important step toward extending our understanding of BEF to globally important ecosystems.