报告摘要

Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems contain a large number of species and provide a large number of ecosystem services, in particular transformation of solar energy and carbon dioxide into biomass, fueling element cycles, soil formation, climate control and more. The role of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments is to test what would happen if the number of species within an ecosystem would be reduced—more drastically than experienced up to now but predicted under some scenarios for the future. These experiments have shown that species loss strongly reduces ecosystem functioning and ecosystem stability and that this effect increases over time. The well-functioning and stability of species-rich ecosystems seem to mainly be due to reduced competition and beneficial interactions between species with complementary niches and/or at different trophic levels. However, it is still unclear what makes interactions beneficial (e.g., which trait differences), how such interactions are shaped by community-assembly and evolutionary processes, and which forces may counteract the emergence of positive biodiversity effects in ecosystems. The challenge for future experiments is to find out new designs that could address these open questions. More direct manipulations of specific interactions, either in simplified model systems or by removal in more complicated systems, may be one approach. Incorporating genetic analysis underpinning interactions from the within-species up to the between-trophic-group level promises to overcome limitations of trait-based approaches. It may be particularly rewarding to develop biodiverse agricultural and forestry systems with desirable functioning, because in these cases some of the forces counteracting positive biodiversity effects such as invasion by “selfish” genotypes or species can be prevented.

个人简介

Bernhard Schmid是瑞士苏黎世大学教授、瑞士国家科学基金会特设理事会成员、北京大学兼职教授，曾任国际生物多样性计划（DIVERSITAS）联合主席、瑞士科学院研究委员会主席（President of Research Commission of the Swiss Academy of Science）、瑞士国家科学基金会研究理事会主席委员（Board of Presidents of Research Council Swiss National Science Foundation）、苏黎世大学理学院院长、德国科学基金会卓越计划研究委员会成员（“Forschungskommission / Gemeinsame Kommission Exzellenzinitiative” of German Science Foundation DFG）。

Bernhard Schmid教授是国际著名的生态学家，尤其在生物多样性科学领域具有重要的国际影响力。他主导设计了世界上几个著名的大尺度的长期生物多样性实验，包括欧盟BIODEPTH实验、德国Jena实验和中国BEF-China实验，这些实验研究不仅带来了突破性的发现，也改变了人们研究生态学的范式。目前，他已经发表了超过450篇论文，包括多篇文章发表于Nature和Science期刊，H-index达到95，是环境科学与生态学领域的全球高被引科学家，荣获德国生态学会的首个荣誉奖章、英国生态学会杰出生态学家等。