Approximately 25 years ago, ecologists became increasingly interested in the question of
whether ongoing biodiversity loss matters for the functioning of ecosystems. As such, a new …

A rich body of knowledge links biodiversity to ecosystem functioning (BEF), but it is primarily
focused on small scales. We review the current theory and identify six expectations for scale …

Biological insurance theory predicts that, in a variable environment, aggregate ecosystem
properties will vary less in more diverse communities because declines in the performance …

Under global change, how biological diversity and ecosystem services are maintained in
time is a fundamental question. Ecologists have long argued about multiple mechanisms by …

Biodiversity enhances many of nature's benefits to people, including the regulation of
climate and the production of wood in forests, livestock forage in grasslands and fish in …

Recent studies have revealed many potential benefits of increasing plant diversity in natural
ecosystems, as well as in agroecosystems and production forests. Plant diversity potentially …

It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which
are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem …

Community assembly of crop-associated fungi is thought to be strongly influenced by
deterministic selection exerted by the plant host, rather than stochastic processes. Here we …

In the past two decades, a large number of studies have investigated the relationship
between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, most of which focussed on a limited set of …

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability is poorly understood in
microbial communities. Biofilm communities in small bioreactors called microbial electrolysis …