Facilitation enhances ecosystem function with non‐random species gains

Terrestrial ecosystem responses to species gains and losses.

Ecosystems worldwide are losing some species and gaining others, resulting in an interchange of species that is having profound impacts on how these ecosystems function. However, research on the effects of species gains and losses has developed largely independently of one another. Recent conceptual advances regarding effects of species gain have arisen from studies that have unraveled the mech...

Biodiversity , Species Composition and Ecosystem Function

An invasive foundation species enhances multifunctionality in a coastal ecosystem

Division of Marine Science and Conservation, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Beaufort, NC 28516; Department of Biology andMarine Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403; Marine Ecology Research Group, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand; and Oceans Institute and School of Plant Biology, Unive...

Facilitation by ecosystem engineers enhances nutrient effects in an intertidal system

Ecosystem engineering research has recently demonstrated the fundamental importance of non-trophic interactions for food-web structure. Particularly, by creating benign conditions in stressful environments, ecosystem engineers create hot beds of elevated levels of recruitment, growth, and survival of associated organisms; this should fuel food webs and promote production on the ecosystem scale....

Randomization tests for quantifying species importance to ecosystem function

importance to ecosystem function Nicholas J. Gotelli*, Werner Ulrich and Fernando T. Maestre Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA; Department of Animal Ecology, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Gagarina 9, 87-100 Toruń, Poland; and Departamento de Biologı́a y Geologı́a, Área de Biodiversidad y Conservación, Escuela Superior de Ciencias Experimentales y T...