Human actions are threatening the interdependent yet fragile balance of the biosphere, with far-reaching consequences for the diversity of plants (Brummitt et al., 2015) and animals (Dirzo et al., 2014). As biodiversity contributes a wealth of ecological services, cascading effects and reassembly of communities jeopardise human well-being and biosphere’s resilience against current and future disturbance (Chaplin-Kramer et al., 2019; Mori et al., 2018). Many of the services, such as food provisioning, decomposition or maintenance of soil fertility, rely on biotic interactions potentially sensitive to global change. This is especially true for regulating services provided by the highly diverse class of insects: pollination and pest regulation, both shown to strongly affect food production (Dainese et al., 2019; Duffy et al., 2017). Reported losses of insect biomass and abundances across Europe and the globe are therefore particularly worrisome (Hallmann et al., 2017; Seibold et al., 2019; Wagner, 2020). Yet the full cross-taxon magnitude of declines and the relative contributions of man-made drivers remain poorly understood.
Disentangling effects of climate and land use on biodiversity and ecosystem services—A multi-scale experimental design
Year: 2021
