Biodiversity is an important determinant of primary productivity in experimental ecosystems. We combine two streams of research on understanding the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem function: quantifying phylogenetic diversity as a predictor of biodiversity effects in species-rich systems and the contribution of pairwise interspecific interactions to ecosystem function. We developed a stati...

Global biodiversity is in decline. This is of concern for aesthetic and ethical reasons, but possibly also for practical reasons, as suggested by experimental studies, mostly with plants, showing that biodiversity reductions in small study plots can lead to compromised ecosystem function. However, inferring that ecosystem functions will decline due to biodiversity loss in the real world rests o...

This contribution examines various flow measures based on analysis of 41 quantified models of trophic interactions in aquatic ecosystems. System productivity/biomass ratio is shown to relate to ecosystem maturity and to the degree of cycling in the systems. Distinct patterns or clusters are observed for different types of resource systems with respect to average path lengths and residence times...

What has the study of ecosystems contributed, where is the field going (and why), and what factors challenge its progress? These questions were the focus of the Cary Conference, which was held at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, in 1997. One product of that conference is this book, which attempts to provide some of the answers to these questions. The book's editors , M...

Theory relating species richness to ecosystem variability typically ignores the potential for environmental variability to promote species coexistence. Failure to account for fluctuation-dependent coexistence may explain deviations from the expected negative diversity-ecosystem variability relationship, and limits our ability to predict the consequences of increases in environmental variability...

In this paper, using sub-supersolution argument, we prove an existence result on positive solution for an ecological model under certain conditions. It also describes the dynamics of the fish population with natural predation and constant yield harvesting. The assumptions are that the ecosystem is spatially homogeneous and the herbivore density is a constant which are valid assumptions for mana...

Plant debris, including woody debris and litter, is an essential but frequently overlooked component of carbon (C) storage in forest ecosystems. Here, we examined the C storage of plant debris and its contribution to total ecosystem C storage in an age sequence of six larch (Larix gmelinii) forest stands (15, 36, 45, 54, 65, and 138 years old) in northeastern China. The plant debris C storage i...

casted the increasing need for fisheries managers to take species interactions into account. It is now widely recognized that ecosystem effects need to be considered in managing fisheries (Pauly 1998, Beamish and Mahnken 1999, Gislason et al. 2000). Steele (1996) concluded that a “regime shift in fisheries management” is required if one is to manage fisheries successfully in the context of ecos...