23.11.2021: Katie BARRY (Utrecht) Zooming in and zooming out to better understand the consequences of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning, HS 31.11, Institut für Biologie, Bereich für Pflanzenwissenschaften, Schubertstraße 51, 17:00 Uhr.
Humans are propelling drastic environmental changes leading to biodiversity loss at regional and global scales. Locally, higher species richness often improves the ability of ecosystems to function. Thus, continuing biodiversity loss may have devastating consequences for ecosystem functioning. The potential consequences of biodiversity loss underpin biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research in local-scale experiments. Yet, the effects of biodiversity change on ecosystem functioning depend on components at multiple scales. First, zooming out - at regional scales, meta-community processes determine ultimate species loss. Second, zooming in - at the local scale, the mechanisms that enhance ecosystem functioning in more diverse systems determine the effect of species loss on ecosystem functioning. I will discuss a diverse array of results across experiments, conceptual studies, a meta-analysis of biodiversity experiments, and a scale manipulation in a natural grassland. These results combined emphasize that zooming-out to larger spatial scales and zooming in on how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning both fundamentally alter the implications of species loss for ecosystem functioning especially in a future where biodiversity change is driven by global change processes.