Thursday, August 6, 2020
Do we need biodiversity to maintain ecosystem function? This question is surprisingly unanswered for complex, large-scale systems - that is, for the real world. Mutualistic networks underlie key ecosystem services such as seed dispersal and pollination, but have not yet been fully incorporated into biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research. We used 15 years of data on plant-pollinator networks collected by our lab group to measure the biodiversity-function relationship at real-world scales. We find a greatly increased need for biodiversity due to turnover in the identity of the important pollinator species across space, time, and plants.