Grassland biodiversity can pay

Effects of Climate Change on Grassland Biodiversity

There is increasing evidence that the impact of climate change on the productivity of 9 grasslands will at least partly depend on their biodiversity. A high level of biodiversity may confer 10 stability to grassland ecosystems against environmental change, but there are also direct effects of 11 biodiversity on the quantity and quality of grassland productivity. To explain the manifold 12 inter...

Community Invasibility, Recruitment Limitation, and Grassland Biodiversity

Plant species composition, species abundances, and species richness were strongly recruitment limited in a 4-yr experiment in which seeds of up to 54 species were added to patches of native grassland. Four field seasons after a one-time addition of seed, many added species were still present and reproducing, with plots seeded at the highest rate having species richness that was 83% greater and ...

Sustaining multiple ecosystem functions in grassland communities requires higher biodiversity.

Society places value on the multiple functions of ecosystems from soil fertility to erosion control to wildlife-carrying capacity, and these functions are potentially threatened by ongoing biodiversity losses. Recent empirically based models using individual species' traits suggest that higher species richness is required to provide multiple ecosystem functions. However, no study to date has an...

Who can pay for innovative medicines?

I nnovative medicines are of vital importance to the patients affected with one of the many acute or chronic illnesses, for which current treatments are often suboptimal. In particular chronic non-communicable diseases are becoming more prevalent, and this is even seen as a real crisis requiring United Nations action [1, 2]. It is widely known that, although the investments of the pharmaceutica...

How can we save forest biodiversity?