A primary motivation for research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of natural ecosystems. Ecosystems arc thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex, dynamic problems. However, the biological processes that contribute to these properties have not been made explicit in Digital Ecosystem research. Here, we introduc...

A primary motivation for research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of natural ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex, dynamic problems. However, the biological processes that contribute to these properties have not been made explicit in Digital Ecosystem research. Here, we introduc...

This paper describes experimental tests of the biological notion that correlated fitness landscapes underlie the functioning of ecosystems. We have demonstrated that a correlated fitness landscape topology describes overall growth in microbial ecosystems as a function of species composition. This confirms the intuitive notion that the more similar the structures of ecosystems are, the more simi...

Experiments performed in various ecosystems have shown a near-universal, saturating relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Analyses of deep-sea ecosystems challenge this generalisation and suggest that positive species interactions might be more widespread than previously believed.

[1] Soil moisture is the environmental variable synthesizing the effect of climate, soil, and vegetation on the dynamics of water-limited ecosystems. Unlike abiotic factors (e.g., soil texture and rainfall regime), the control exerted by vegetation composition and structure on soil moisture variability remains poorly understood. A number of field studies in dryland landscapes have found higher ...

Anthropogenic infl uences have disproportionally aff ected freshwater ecosystems, and a loss of biodiversity is forecasted to greatly reduce ecosystem function and services. Loss of species may destabilize communities by limiting the stabilizing forces of compensatory dynamics and/or statistical averaging, both of which are eff ects that can buff er variation in aggregate community properties. ...

Carnivore (top-down) and resource (bottom-up) influences in food webs are strong and pervasive, but few studies have investigated their interactive effects in speciesrich terrestrial ecosystems. This study focused on arthropods associated with the dominant tree species, Metrosideros polymorpha (Myrtaceae), in Hawaiian forests. Severe soil nutrient limitation on a 120-yr-old lava flow was remove...

Peatlands are ecosystems of great relevance, because they have an important number of ecological functions that provide many services to mankind. However, studies focusing on plant diversity, addressed from the remote sensing perspective, are still scarce in these environments. In the present study, predictions of vascular plant richness and diversity were performed in three anthropogenic peatl...