The Ecology Book

156

SPECIES MAINTAIN

THE FUNCTIONING AND

STABILITY OF ECOSYSTEMS

BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTION

I

n an age when human

activities are rapidly eroding

the complex mix of species in

different habitats, ecologists have

increasingly focused on how

biodiversity loss affects the way

ecosystems work. If species are

replaced or lost altogether, can an

ecosystem remain intact—or does

this damage ecosystem function?

Such questions were the focus

of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem

Function (BEF) conference held in

Paris in 2000. More than 60 leading

international ecologists, including

Michel Loreau, director of the

Centre for Biodiversity Theory

and Modeling in Moulis, France,

outlined diverse research; some

looked more closely at species,

others at what makes an ecosystem

work. Loreau maintains that

a new unified ecological theory

is necessary to combat extreme

IN CONTEXT

KEY FIGURE

Michel Loreau (1954 –)

BEFORE

1949 At the California Institute

of Technology in the US, the

first phytotron (research

greenhouse) is built to study

how an artificial ecosystem

can be manipulated.

1991 In the UK, an Ecotron,

a set of experimental

ecosystems in computer-

controlled units, is created at

Imperial College, London.

AFTER

2014 Leading ecologists in

the US say that the effect of

diversity loss on ecosystems

is at least as great as—or even

greater than—that of fire,

drought, or other drivers of

environmental change.

2015 A paper published in

Nature provides evidence that

biodiversity increases an

ecosystem’s resilience in a

broad range of climate events.

A phytotron built in 1968 in North

Carolina, US, now includes 60 growth

chambers, four greenhouses, and a

controlled-environment facility for

studying plant diseases and insects.

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