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Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity

Nature volume 486, pages 59–67 (2012)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 25 July 2012

Abstract

The most unique feature of Earth is the existence of life, and the most extraordinary feature of life is its diversity. Approximately 9 million types of plants, animals, protists and fungi inhabit the Earth. So, too, do 7 billion people. Two decades ago, at the first Earth Summit, the vast majority of the world’s nations declared that human actions were dismantling the Earth’s ecosystems, eliminating genes, species and biological traits at an alarming rate. This observation led to the question of how such loss of biological diversity will alter the functioning of ecosystems and their ability to provide society with the goods and services needed to prosper.

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Figure 1: The form of a typical diversity–function relationship.
Figure 2: Towards a better link between BEF and BES research.

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Acknowledgements

This work was conceived as a part of the working group, Biodiversity and the Functioning of Ecosystems: Translating Model Experiments into Functional Reality, supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a Center funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant EF-0553768), the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California. Additional funds were provided by NFS’ DIMENSIONS of Biodiversity program to BJC (DEB-104612), and by the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Research Training Network (BESTNet) (NSF Grant 0639252). The use of trade names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Bradley J. Cardinale, Patrick Venail & Anita Narwani

  2. Virginia Institute of Marine Science, The College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, 23062, Virginia, USA

    J. Emmett Duffy

  3. Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1B1, Canada,

    Andrew Gonzalez

  4. Department of Biology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, 98225, Washington, USA

    David U. Hooper

  5. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, 85287, Arizona, USA

    Charles Perrings & Ann P. Kinzig

  6. Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park SL5 7PY, UK,

    Georgina M. Mace

  7. Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, 55108, Minnesota, USA

    David Tilman

  8. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, S- 901 83 Umeå, Sweden,

    David A. Wardle

  9. Department of Biology and Woods Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    Gretchen C. Daily

  10. Station d’Ecologie Expérimentale, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 09200 Moulis, France,

    Michel Loreau

  11. US Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, 70506, Louisiana, USA

    James B. Grace

  12. Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 57, Rue Cuvier, CP 41 75231, Paris Cedex 05, France,

    Anne Larigauderie

  13. Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada,

    Diane S. Srivastava

  14. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Shahid Naeem

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This file contains Supplementary Tables 1-2 and Supplementary References. This file was replaced on 25 July 2012 to correct the errors in Supplementary Table 2. (PDF 316 kb)

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Cardinale, B., Duffy, J., Gonzalez, A. et al. Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature 486, 59–67 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11148

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