Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network, Smithsonian Institution, 647 Contees Wharf Road, Edgewater, Maryland 21037, USA.
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA.
Nature. 2017 Sep 14;549(7671):261-264. doi: 10.1038/nature23886. Epub 2017 Sep 6.
More than 500 controlled experiments have collectively suggested that biodiversity loss reduces ecosystem productivity and stability. Yet the importance of biodiversity in sustaining the world's ecosystems remains controversial, largely because of the lack of validation in nature, where strong abiotic forcing and complex interactions are assumed to swamp biodiversity effects. Here we test this assumption by analysing 133 estimates reported in 67 field studies that statistically separated the effects of biodiversity on biomass production from those of abiotic forcing. Contrary to the prevailing opinion of the previous two decades that biodiversity would have rare or weak effects in nature, we show that biomass production increases with species richness in a wide range of wild taxa and ecosystems. In fact, after controlling for environmental covariates, increases in biomass with biodiversity are stronger in nature than has previously been documented in experiments and comparable to or stronger than the effects of other well-known drivers of productivity, including climate and nutrient availability. These results are consistent with the collective experimental evidence that species richness increases community biomass production, and suggest that the role of biodiversity in maintaining productive ecosystems should figure prominently in global change science and policy.
已有超过 500 项对照实验共同表明，生物多样性的丧失会降低生态系统的生产力和稳定性。然而，生物多样性在维持世界生态系统方面的重要性仍然存在争议，主要是因为缺乏自然验证，在自然环境中，强烈的非生物胁迫和复杂的相互作用被认为会淹没生物多样性的影响。在这里，我们通过分析 67 项实地研究中报告的 133 项估计来检验这一假设，这些研究从统计学上分离了生物多样性对生物量生产的影响和非生物胁迫的影响。与过去二十年流行的观点相反，即生物多样性在自然界中只会产生罕见或微弱的影响，我们发现，在广泛的野生分类群和生态系统中，生物量的产生随着物种丰富度的增加而增加。事实上，在控制了环境协变量之后，生物多样性对生物量的增加在自然界中比以前在实验中记录的更强，与其他众所周知的生产力驱动因素（包括气候和养分供应）的影响相当或更强。这些结果与物种丰富度增加群落生物量产生的集体实验证据一致，并表明生物多样性在维持生产力生态系统方面的作用应该在全球变化科学和政策中占据重要地位。
