Determining the scientific relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has emerged as one of the important challenges in ecological and environmental science. This book provides a synthesis and critical assessment in order to generate a consensus on the main issues involved and stimulate perspectives for future research.

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has emerged as one of the most exciting and dynamic areas in contemporary ecology. Increasing domination of ecosystems by humans is steadily transforming them into depauperate systems. How will this loss of biodiversity affect the functioning and stability of natural and managed ecosystems? This volume provides the first comprehensive and balanced coverage of recent empirical and theoretical research on this question. It reviews the evidence, provides bases for the resolution of the debate that has divided scientists on these issues, and offers perspectives on how current knowledge can be extended to other ecosystems, other organisms and other spatial and temporal scales. It cuts across the traditional division between community ecology and ecosystem ecology, and announces a new ecological synthesis in which the dynamics of biological diversity and the biogeochemical functioning of the earth system are merged.

1. BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING: THE EMERGENCE OF A SYNTHETIC FRAMEWORK
2. The debate on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
3. PLANT DIVERSITY AND COMPOSITION: EFFECTS ON PRODUCTIVITY AND NUTRIENT DYNAMICS OF EXPERIMENTAL GRASSLANDS
4. Biodiversity manipulation experiments: studies replicated at multiple sites
5. Evaluating the relative strengths of biotic versus abiotic controls of ecosystem processes
6. The design and analysis of biodiversity experiments
7. A NEW LOOK AT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STABILITY AND DIVERSITY
8. Do species interactions buffer environmental variation (in theory)?
9. Biodiversity and stability in soil ecosystems: patterns, processes and the effects of disturbance
10. Neighbourhood-scale effects of species diversity on biological invasions and their relation to community patterns
11. CONTRIBUTIONS OF AQUATIC MODEL SYSTEMS TO OUR UNDERSTANDING OF BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING
12. How can marine ecology contribute to the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning debate?
13. Multitrophic dynamics and ecosystem processes
14. Biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and the aboveground-belowground linkages
15. Biodiversity and ecosystem function in soil decomposer food webs
16. The critical role of plant-microbe interactions on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: arbuscular mycorrhizal associations as an example
17. SPECIES DIVERSITY, FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING
18. Slippin' and slidin' between the scales: the scaling components of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relations
19. Effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning in managed ecosystems
20. PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES