Over the past several decades, a rapidly expanding field of research known as biodiversity
and ecosystem functioning has begun to quantify how the world's biological diversity can, as …

How large numbers of competing plant species manage to coexist is a major unresolved
question in community ecology. The classical explanation, that each species occupies its …

A significant increase in reactive nitrogen (N) added to terrestrial ecosystems through
agricultural fertilization or atmospheric deposition is considered to be one of the most …

Evidence is mounting that extinctions are altering key processes important to the productivity
and sustainability of Earth's ecosystems,,,. Further species loss will accelerate change in …

How closely does variability in ecologically important traits reflect evolutionary divergence?
The use of phylogenetic diversity (PD) to predict biodiversity effects on ecosystem …

Humans are altering the composition of biological communities through a variety of activities
that increase rates of species invasions and species extinctions, at all scales, from local to …

Aim An important issue regarding biodiversity concerns its influence on ecosystem
functioning. Experimental work has led to the proposal of mechanisms such as niche …

Loss of biological diversity because of extinction is one of the most pronounced changes to
the global environment. For several decades, researchers have tried to understand how …

Elton's biotic resistance hypothesis, which posits that diverse communities should be more
resistant to biological invasions, has received considerable experimental support. However …

Two main effects are proposed to explain biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships:
niche complementarity and selection effects. Both can be functionally defined using the …