Zooming in and zooming out to better understand the consequences of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning

Katie BARRY (Utrecht): 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 func-tion. Thus, continuing biodiversity loss may have devastating consequences for ecosystem func-tioning. The potential consequences of biodiversity loss underpin biodiversity-ecosystem func-tioning 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, me-ta-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 ef-fect of species loss on ecosystem functioning. I will discuss a diverse array of results across ex-periments, conceptual studies, a meta-analysis of biodiversity experiments, and a scale manipu-lation in a natural grassland. These results combined emphasize that zooming-out to larger spa-tial 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 biodi-versity change is driven by global change processes.