Zavaleta Erika S, Hulvey Kristin B
Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
Science. 2004 Nov 12;306(5699):1175-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1102643.
Consequences of progressive biodiversity declines depend on the functional roles of individual species and the order in which species are lost. Most studies of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relation tackle only the first of these factors. We used observed variation in grassland diversity to design an experimental test of how realistic species losses affect invasion resistance. Because entire plant functional groups disappeared faster than expected by chance, resistance declined dramatically with progressive species losses. Realistic biodiversity losses, even of rare species, can thus affect ecosystem processes far more than indicated by randomized-loss experiments.
生物多样性持续下降的后果取决于单个物种的功能作用以及物种丧失的顺序。大多数关于生物多样性与生态系统功能关系的研究仅涉及这些因素中的第一个。我们利用观察到的草地多样性变化，设计了一个实验来测试实际的物种丧失如何影响入侵抗性。由于整个植物功能群消失的速度比随机预期的要快，随着物种的逐渐丧失，抗性急剧下降。因此，实际的生物多样性丧失，即使是稀有物种的丧失，对生态系统过程的影响可能远比随机丧失实验所显示的要大得多。
