Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, 2 route du CNRS, Moulis, 09200, France.
Center for Forest Research, Université du Québec (TELUQ), 5800 Saint-Denis, Montreal, QC, H2S 3L5, Canada.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2021 Oct;96(5):2333-2354. doi: 10.1111/brv.12756. Epub 2021 Jun 2.
Biological insurance theory predicts that, in a variable environment, aggregate ecosystem properties will vary less in more diverse communities because declines in the performance or abundance of some species or phenotypes will be offset, at least partly, by smoother declines or increases in others. During the past two decades, ecology has accumulated strong evidence for the stabilising effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning. As biological insurance is reaching the stage of a mature theory, it is critical to revisit and clarify its conceptual foundations to guide future developments, applications and measurements. In this review, we first clarify the connections between the insurance and portfolio concepts that have been used in ecology and the economic concepts that inspired them. Doing so points to gaps and mismatches between ecology and economics that could be filled profitably by new theoretical developments and new management applications. Second, we discuss some fundamental issues in biological insurance theory that have remained unnoticed so far and that emerge from some of its recent applications. In particular, we draw a clear distinction between the two effects embedded in biological insurance theory, i.e. the effects of biodiversity on the mean and variability of ecosystem properties. This distinction allows explicit consideration of trade-offs between the mean and stability of ecosystem processes and services. We also review applications of biological insurance theory in ecosystem management. Finally, we provide a synthetic conceptual framework that unifies the various approaches across disciplines, and we suggest new ways in which biological insurance theory could be extended to address new issues in ecology and ecosystem management. Exciting future challenges include linking the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and stability, incorporating multiple functions and feedbacks, developing new approaches to partition biodiversity effects across scales, extending biological insurance theory to complex interaction networks, and developing new applications to biodiversity and ecosystem management.
生物保险理论预测，在多变的环境中，多样性更高的群落中总生态系统属性的变化会更小，因为某些物种或表型的表现或丰度下降，至少会在一定程度上被其他物种或表型的更平滑的下降或增加所抵消。在过去的二十年中，生态学积累了大量证据表明生物多样性对生态系统功能具有稳定作用。由于生物保险正处于成熟理论的阶段，重新审视和澄清其概念基础对于指导未来的发展、应用和测量至关重要。在这篇综述中，我们首先阐明了生态学界中使用的保险和投资组合概念与启发它们的经济学概念之间的联系。这样做指出了生态学和经济学之间存在的差距和不匹配，这些差距和不匹配可以通过新的理论发展和新的管理应用来弥补。其次，我们讨论了生物保险理论中迄今为止尚未被注意到的一些基本问题，这些问题是从该理论的一些最近应用中出现的。特别是，我们清楚地区分了生物保险理论中包含的两种效应，即生物多样性对生态系统属性均值和变异性的影响。这种区分允许明确考虑生态系统过程和服务的均值和稳定性之间的权衡。我们还回顾了生物保险理论在生态系统管理中的应用。最后，我们提供了一个综合的概念框架，统一了不同学科的各种方法，并提出了新的方法，以扩展生物保险理论来解决生态学和生态系统管理中的新问题。未来令人兴奋的挑战包括将生物多样性对生态系统功能和稳定性的影响联系起来，纳入多种功能和反馈，开发新方法来跨尺度划分生物多样性效应，将生物保险理论扩展到复杂的相互作用网络，并开发新的应用来解决生物多样性和生态系统管理问题。
