The debate about the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been intensively investigated over the last few years. The main hypothesis is that loss of species diversity will be detrimental to key ecosystem processes such as primary productivity. The implication is that the continuous loss of biodiversity due to human intervention will cause loss of ecosystem services fundamental for the human enterprise and well-being. The hypothesis is highly controversial and has been proved by some studies and rejected by others. The team of scientists used standardized protocols in all experiments to assemble grassland communities with different plant richness levels ranging from monocultures to high diversities that match natural background levels.
Productivity declines with the loss of plant diversity.
The relationship was best described by a linear relation between productivity and the logarithm of the number of plant species. The results also highlight the importance of considering scaling issues when analyzing the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.