Examining Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services
By: Joshua Jenkins
Components and levels of organization of
biodiversity that have been related to
ecosystem services. Results are derived
from a search in ISI Web of Science and
Biological Abstracts in May 2011 for all past
references using the term in the graph and
''(plant or invertebrates or nonvascular
plants or microbes or aquatic plants or
vertebrates) and ecosystem services''.
Possible ecological consequences of diversity
loss. (1) The redundancy response predicts
that initial losses of diversity will be
accompanied by minimal change in the
ecosystem process because some fraction of
species are redundant for that process;
however, at some point, loss of species leads
to rapid declines in ecological function. (2)
Ecosystem function declines proportionally to
species loss. (3) An abrupt loss in ecosystem
functioning is given by the loss of a keystone
species or last member of a key functional
group, or the addition of a new species trait.
Effects of increased diversity associated to
more diverse cropping schemes
(polycultures) relative to less diverse ones
or crop monocultures on various ecosystem
services. The mean of the proportional
effects of diversity and the 95% confidence
intervals values derived from the
meta-analysis are shown for each response
variable. Significant effects correspond to
average and confidence interval values that
do not overlap with the no-effect line.
Effects of different anthropogenic disturbance factors on (a) bee
abundance (solid line) and (b) bee richness (dashed line). Mean
effect and 95% confidence intervals are shown for each type of
disturbance. Significant effects correspond to average and
confidence interval values that do not overlap with the no-effect
line. Numbers above each result indicate the number of
independent measurements found in the literature used for the
analyses (modified from 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, clear open symbol, and Quijas S, Schmid B, and
Balvanera P (2010) Plant diversity enhances provision of
ecosystem services: A new synthesis.
Effects of experimental manipulations of
biodiversity on ecosystem services. Symbols
show differential effects of trophic level
manipulated: circle, primary producers;
diamond, mycorrhiza; square, decomposer.
Numbers above each result indicate the number
of independent measurements found in the
literature used for the analyses (modified from
Cardinale BJ, Matulich KL, Hooper DU, et al.
(2011) The functional role of producer diversity
in ecosystems. American Journal of Botany 98:
572-592, and Chapin FS, Zavaleta ES, Eviner
VT, et al. (2000) Consequences of changing
biodiversity.
Biodiversity is tightly linked to ecosystem services and thus to the human well-being in
complex ways. The roles played by biodiversity in key ecosystem services such as
agricultural food production, regulation of soil productive potential, crop pollination, and
human disease regulation have been intensively studied and show very different patterns.