Birds are one of the most diverse groups of ecosystem service providers, whose ecological
functions range from creating soil to shaping primate behavior, Nevertheless, the impression …

Ecosystem services are natural processes that benefit humans. Birds contribute the four
types of services recognized by the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment—provisioning …

Stopping declines in biodiversity is critically important, but it is only a first step toward
achieving more ambitious conservation goals. The absence of an objective and practical …

What are birds worth—what is their actual dollar value to human society? To most of us in
the ornithological community, birds are invaluable. But in these times we need more specific …

Soil and its biota are fundamental components of the “Critical Zone”: Earth's living skin that
most directly sustains life. Within that zone, geologically-rapid soil and saprolite …

The influence of natural disturbance on biodiversity is poorly known in the intensively
cultivated landscape of Europe. As an example of insect disturbance we studied effects of …

Ecosystem engineers have been widely studied for terrestrial systems, but global trends in
research encompassing the range of taxa and functions have not previously been …

Aim Organisms that disturb the soil while foraging or creating shelter (ecosystem engineers)
can have profound effects on ecosystems. Soil ejecta from these disturbances can enhance …

Abstract The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment described 4 classes of services or functions
that ecosystems and their component parts deliver to the benefit of humans: provisioning …

Bioerosion, the breakdown of hard substrata by organisms, is a fundamental and
widespread ecological process that can alter habitat structure, biodiversity and …