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Nature 390, 440-441 (4 December 1997) | doi:10.1038/37222

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Ecology:  Be diverse, be predictable

Ilkka Hanski1

One of the grand challenges of ecology is the prediction of the variability in the sizes of populations, in the species composition of communities, and in the function of ecosystems. How much this variability is affected by biodiversity — and by which kind of biodiversity — has remained especially contentious, and the political debate about biodiversity has attached extra weight to this.

  1. Ilkka Hanski is at the Department of Ecology and Systematics, University of Helsinki, PO Box 17, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
    e-mail: Email: ilkka.hanski@helsinki.fi