Shahid Naeem

• Columbia University

Green infrastructure's capacity to mitigate urban environmental problems, like heat island effects and excessive stormwater runoff, is partially governed by its plant community. Traditionally, green infrastructure design has focused on engineered aspects, such as substrate and drainage, rather than on the properties of its living components. Since...

Most tundra carbon flux modeling relies on leaf area index (LAI), generally estimated from measurements of canopy greenness using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), to estimate the direction and magnitude of fluxes. However, due to the relative sparseness and low stature of tundra canopies, such models do not explicitly consider the...

Inland fisheries feed greater than 150 million people globally, yet their status is rarely assessed due to their socio-ecological complexity and pervasive lack of data. Here, we leverage an unprecedented landings time series from the Amazon, Earth's largest river basin, together with theoretical food web models to examine (i) taxonomic and trait-ba...

Increases in biodiversity often lead to greater, and less variable, levels of ecosystem functioning. However, whether species are less likely to go extinct in more diverse ecosystems is unclear. We use comprehensive estimates of avian taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity to characterise the global relationship between multiple dimension...

Understanding the biodiversity–productivity relationship and underlying mechanisms in natural ecosystems under realistic diversity loss scenarios remains a major challenge for ecologists despite its importance for predicting impacts of rapid loss of biodiversity worldwide. Here we report the results of a plant functional group (PFG) removal experim...

Although biodiversity loss adversely influences a variety of ecosystem functions, how declining wild food diversity affects nutrient supplies for people is poorly understood. Here, we analyze the impact of declining biodiversity on nutrients supplied by fish using detailed information from the Peruvian Amazon, where inland fisheries provide a criti...

Plant diversity has a positive influence on the number of ecosystem functions maintained simultaneously by a community, or multifunctionality. While the presence of multiple trophic levels beyond plants, or trophic complexity, affects individual functions, the effect of trophic complexity on the diversity–multifunctionality relationship is less wel...

In arctic tundra, large and small mammalian herbivores have substantial impacts on the vegetation community and consequently can affect the magnitude of carbon cycling. However, herbivores are often absent from modern carbon cycle models, partly because relatively few field studies focus on herbivore impacts on carbon cycling. Our objectives were t...

Groundwater depletion is becoming a global threat to food security, yet the ultimate impacts of depletion on agricultural production and the efficacy of available adaptation strategies remain poorly quantified. We use high-resolution satellite and census data from India, the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, to quantify the impacts of ground...

Warming-induced nutrient enrichment in the Arctic may lead to shifts in leaf-level physiological properties and processes with potential consequences for plant community dynamics and ecosystem function. To explore the physiological responses of Arctic tundra vegetation to increasing nutrient availability, we examined how a set of leaf nutrient and...

The well-being of people living around protected areas is critical in its own right as well as for effective conservation, particularly in human-dominated landscapes. We examine the contributions of financial, social, and natural capital to household food access of 883 households around Kanha National Park (KNP) in central India over three seasons....

The mammalian and avian assemblages of intact tropical forests are among the most diverse vertebrate communities on Earth and influence the structure, composition, and functioning of these forests in myriad ways. Over recent centuries, however, increasing human domination of the tropics has led to widespread defaunation, or the decline, local-, or...

A lack of spatial congruence between carbon storage and biodiversity in intact forests suggests limited cobenefits of carbon‐focused policies for conserving tropical biodiversity. However, whether the same applies in tropical human‐dominated landscapes (HDLs) is unclear. In India's Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot, we found that while HDL forests...

Rapid environmental change at high latitudes is predicted to greatly alter the diversity, structure, and function of plant communities, resulting in changes in the pools and fluxes of nutrients. In Arctic tundra, increased nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) availability accompanying warming is known to impact plant diversity and ecosystem function; ho...

As society strives to transition towards more sustainable development pathways, it is important to properly conceptualize the link between biodiversity (i.e. genes, traits, species and other dimensions) and human well-being (HWB; i.e. health, wealth, security and other dimensions). Here, we explore how published conceptual frameworks consider the e...

Biodiversity is inherently multidimensional, encompassing taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic, genetic, landscape and many other elements of variability of life on the Earth. However, this fundamental principle of multidimensionality is rarely applied in research aimed at understanding biodiversity’s value to ecosystem functions and the services th...

Biodiversity as a multidimensional construct: Alternative SEM Models, Placement of Number of Taxa, and Correlations

Plants are strongly influenced by their thermal environments, and this influence manifests itself in a variety of ways, such as altered ranges, growth, morphology, or physiology. However, plants also modify their local thermal environments through feedbacks related to properties and processes such as albedo and evapotranspiration. Here, we used lea...

Soil organic matter is critical to sustainable agriculture because it provides nutrients to crops as it decomposes and increases nutrient-and water-holding capacity when built up. Fast-and slow-cycling fractions of soil organic matter can have different impacts on crop production because fast-cycling fractions rapidly release nutrients for short-te...

Significance Biodiversity is broadly thought to be positively associated with a wide array of ecosystem functions and properties. Because these properties may reduce extinction risk, for example, by making functioning more stable and ecosystems less prone to invasion, biodiverse islands have the potential to accumulate species over evolutionary tim...

Figure S1. A second dung beetle‐mammal interaction network, estimated from spatially explicit co‐occurrence data from the western Brazilian Amazon, from an independent, and simultaneously collected dataset (see Methods). Overall network size (S) = 22 (17 consumer and five producer species), average number of links per species (L/S) = 1.27, and prop...

Predicting the functional consequences of biodiversity loss in realistic, multi-trophic communities remains a challenge. No existing biodiversity–ecosystem function study to date has simultaneously incorporated information on species traits, network topology, and extinction across multiple trophic levels, while all three factors are independently u...

Global change drivers are rapidly altering resource availability and biodiversity. While there is consensus that greater biodiversity increases the functioning of ecosystems, the extent to which biodiversity buffers ecosystem productivity in response to changes in resource availability remains unclear. We use data from 16 grassland experiments acro...

Understanding the impacts of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning and services has been a central issue in ecology. Experiments in synthetic communities suggest that biodiversity loss may erode a set of ecosystem functions, but studies in natural communities indicate that the effects of biodiversity loss are usually weak and that multiple fun...

Shade-grown, montane coffee agroforestry systems have the potential to conserve native tree species of conservation concern (CC) and typical of old growth or late succession (LS) forests in montane cloud forests. However, it remains unclear how preferential selection by farmers for or against certain tree species and diameter sizes affects CC and L...

Soil organic matter is critical to sustainable agriculture because it provides nutrients to crops as it decomposes and increases nutrient- and water-holding capacity when built up. Fast- and slow-cycling fractions of soil organic matter can have different impacts on crop production because fast-cycling fractions rapidly release nutrients for short-...

The rapid loss of global biodiversity can greatly affect the functioning of above‐ground components of ecosystems. However, how such biodiversity losses affect below‐ground communities and linkages to soil carbon (C) sequestration is unclear. Here, we describe how losses in plant functional groups ( PFG s) affect soil microbial and nematode communi...

This file contains additional information in support of the study.

Biodiversity is inherently multidimensional, encompassing taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic, genetic, landscape and many other elements of variability of life on the Earth. However, this fundamental principle of multidimensionality is rarely applied in research aimed at understanding biodiversity's value to ecosystem functions and the services th...

Biodiversity is inherently multidimensional, encompassing taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic, genetic, landscape and many other elements of variability of life on the Earth. However, this fundamental principle of multidimensionality is rarely applied in research aimed at understanding biodiversity's value to ecosystem functions and the services th...

Embedded Figure Legend: How above- and belowground multitrophic interactions may translate into ecosystem services. Most functional guilds (herbivores, omnivores, carnivores) of the detrital soil food web (brown pathway) are mirroring those of the aboveground food web (green pathway) in this conceptual graph. Their close synergy is shown by support...

The study of ecological services is fast becoming a cornerstone of mainstream ecology, largely because they provide a useful means of linking functioning to societal benefits in complex systems by connecting different organizational levels. In order to identify the main challenges facing current and future ecosystem service research, we analysed th...

The study of ecological services (ESs) is fast becoming a cornerstone of mainstream ecology, largely because they provide a useful means of linking functioning to societal benefits in complex systems by connecting different organizational levels. In order to identify the main challenges facing current and future ES research, we analyzed the effects...

Programs and projects employing payments for ecosystem service (PES) interventions achieve their objectives by linking buyers and sellers of ecosystem services. Although PES projects have become popular conservation and development interventions, their adherence to basic ecological principles, which may be essential to the long-term provisioning of...

It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that...

Functional trait research has led to greater understanding of the impacts of biodiversity in ecosystems. Yet, functional trait approaches have not been widely applied to agroecosystems and understanding of the importance of agrobiodiversity remains limited to a few ecosystem processes and services. To improve this understanding, we argue here for a...

In agroforestry systems, the survival of shade trees is often the result of farmers' deliberate selection. Therefore, how communities generate knowledge and apply it to resource management practices influence the potential for biodiversity conservation of agroforestry systems. In this study, we investigated the use of knowledge by farmers to manage...

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of nature's goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision ( 1 ,...

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of nature's goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision. Inte...

Tropical smallholder agriculture is undergoing rapid transformation in nutrient cycling pathways as international development efforts strongly promote greater use of mineral fertilizers to increase crop yields. These changes in nutrient availability may alter the composition of microbial communities with consequences for rates of biogeochemical pro...

Context The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is a central topic in ecology on local, regional, and global scales. A powerful approach to BEF studies is large-scale field manipulative experimentation. Objectives The Inner Mongolian Grassland Removal Experiment (IMGRE) was designed to examine the mechanisms of the BEF...

Fertilization may impact ecosystem processes that sustain agriculture, such as nutrient cycling, by altering the composition of soil microbial communities that regulate such processes. These processes are crucial to low‐input, smallholder tropical agriculture, which supports 900 million of the world's poorest people. Yet little is known about how e...

Across the globe, biodiversity loss is occurring at an unprecedented rate. Rare species are especially susceptible to extinction, given that they typically have small population sizes and restricted geographic ranges, are less adaptable to disturbances, and are greater habitat specialists. However, while rare species may be prone to extinction, it...

Background/Question/Methods The influence of biodiversity on ecosystem properties has been examined primarily by varying single dimensions of diversity (e.g., taxonomic, functional, genetic) and then monitoring ecosystem responses. In general, these uni-dimensional studies reveal that biodiversity is likely to show a positive, saturating associati...

You have three choices – observe, theorize, or test theory. Therein lies the staid, fifty-year old core of academic ecology. In reality, ecologists bring together natural history facts, theoretical constructs, statistical methodologies, and environmental data, forming cloud-like masses of scientific knowledge. If, and only if they condense, like st...

Background/Question/Methods The fragility or robustness of biotic assemblages is an important and complex property of ecological systems. While many studies have examined the connection between biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF), the relationship between diversity and assemblage fragility—the relative abundances of species prone to extinct...

Agroforestry is considered a promising alternative to conventional agriculture that can both conserve biodiversity and support local livelihoods. Coffee agroforestry may be particularly important for sustaining trees of conservation concern and late-successional stage, but this possibility remains unclear. Here, we examined whether coffee agrofores...

The majority of species in ecosystems are rare, but the ecosystem consequences of losing rare species are poorly known. To understand how rare species may influence ecosystem functioning, this study quantifies the contribution of species based on their relative level of rarity to community functional diversity using a trait-based approach. Given th...

If a development strategy is ecologically sound, meaning that it is founded on ecological principles and is environmentally sustainable, then it qualifies as sustainable development, but qualifying as such makes no guarantees about whether it will or will not promote poverty reduction. There are, of course, different definitions of sustainable deve...

Human wellbeing is more likely to be secured if we work in the service of nature rather than attempt to force nature to work in the service of humanity. The success of ecology and evolution is attributable to subscription to the philosophical principles of naturalism and pragmatism, neither of which admit romantic, spiritual, moral, or other humani...

We examine the potential of trait-based parameters of taxa for linking above-ground and below-ground ecological networks (hereafter ‘green’ and ‘brown’ worlds) to understand and predict community dynamics. This synthesis considers carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus-related traits, the abundance of component species and their size-distribution across t...

Background/Question/Methods Soil microbial communities are known to dominate most biogeochemical processes. These processes—and thus the diversity and composition of the microbial communities that drive them—are essential for the functioning of ecosystems, both in natural and managed, agricultural settings. Efforts to feed growing human populatio...

Shahid Naeem examines the seductive concept of repopulating habitats with locally extinct species.

Comparative analyses that link information on species' traits, environmental change, and organism response have rarely identified unambiguous trait correlates of vulnerability. We tested if species' traits could predict local-scale changes in dung beetle population response to three levels of forest conversion intensity within and across two biogeo...

Comparative analyses that link information on species' traits, environmental change, and organism response have rarely identified unambiguous trait correlates of vulnerability. We tested if species' traits could predict local-scale changes in dung beetle population response to three levels of forest conversion intensity within and across two biogeo...

We examine the potential of trait-based parameters of taxa for linking above- and below-ground ecological networks (hereafter 'green' and 'brown' worlds) to understand and predict community dynamics. This synthesis considers carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus-related traits, the abundance of component species and their size distribution across trophic...

Recent studies indicate that species richness can enhance the ability of plant assemblages to support multiple ecosystem functions. To understand how and when ecosystem services depend on biodiversity, it is valuable to expand beyond experimental grasslands. We examined whether plant diversity improves the capacity of agroecosystems to sustain mult...

Variation among fallow types in ecosystem multi-functionality in terms of the proportion of ecosystem functions above 25, 50, and 75% of respective function maxima. (PDF)

Plant diversity and environmental variables serving as predictors of fallow ecosystem multi-functionality. (DOC)

Pair-wise jointness among ecosystem functions. (DOC)

Derivation of growth form-specific biovolume to biomass conversion factors. (DOC)

Background/Question/Methods One of the most challenging problems facing sustainability is establishing mechanisms for monitoring the consumption of ecosystem goods and services. A widely adopted and rapidly evolving approach is Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) projects. PES represents a mechanism for monetizing the value of ecosystem service...

Ecosystems worldwide are rapidly losing taxonomic, phylogenetic, genetic, and functional diversity as a result of human appropriation of natural resources, modification of habitats and climate, and the spread of pathogenic, exotic, and domestic plants and animals. Twenty years of intense theoretical and empirical research have shown that such bioti...

The most unique feature of Earth is the existence of life, and the most extraordinary feature of life is its diversity. Approximately 9 million types of plants, animals, protists and fungi inhabit the Earth. So, too, do 7 billion people. Two decades ago, at the first Earth Summit, the vast majority of the world's nations declared that human actions...

Interactions among ecosystem services are increasingly perceived as important to ecosystem service delivery. Synergies and trade-offs among ecosystem services arise through direct ecological interactions or indirectly through correlated responses to other factors. To investigate whether and how interactions of overstory trees and shrubs with livest...

The development of effective agricultural monitoring networks is essential to track, anticipate and manage changes in the social, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture. We welcome the perspective of Lindenmayer and Likens (J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 1559) as published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring on our earlier paper, "...

The time is ripe for a comprehensive mission to explore and document Earth's species. This calls for a campaign to educate and inspire the next generation of professional and citizen species explorers, investments in cyber-infrastructure and collections to meet the unique needs of the producers and consumers of taxonomic information, and the format...

After the collective failure to achieve the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD’s) 2010 target to substantially reduce biodiversity losses, the CBD adopted a plan composed of five strategic goals and 20 “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Time-bound) targets, to be achieved by 2020. Here, an interdisciplinary group of sci...

Plant traits – the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs – determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. T...

Shahid Naeem compares two books that call for us to embrace the influence of humans on ecosystems.

Background/Question/Methods Recent experimental studies have provided evidence that greater species richness can increase the ability of plant communities to support multiple ecosystem functions. If biodiversity-ecosystem function research is to improve understanding of how and when ecosystem services depend on biodiversity, it will be necessary t...

Background/Question/Methods The future of tropical forest species depends in part on their ability to survive in human-modified landscapes. Theory suggests that species with particular traits may be greater risk of extinction as a consequence of habitat modification than others. While the search for mechanistic links between species traits and ex...

How closely does variability in ecologically important traits reflect evolutionary divergence? The use of phylogenetic diversity (PD) to predict biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning, and more generally the use of phylogenetic information in community ecology, depends in part on the answer to this question. However, comparisons of the predi...

1. Given that approximately one-quarter of grasslands worldwide have been converted to agriculture, understanding the consequences of agricultural conversion for ecosystem functioning can provide insight into potential changes in the world’s most intensively managed biomes. The Great Plains of the United States represents a major grassland region t...

The Convention on Biological Diversity's 2020 targets are an improvement over the 2010 target, but they could be strengthened.

Background/Question/Methods Ecosystems provide multiple services to society. While most research on ecosystem services has not addressed interactions between ecosystem services, compelling evidence for large-scale and long-term ecosystem service interactions has emerged recently, arguing for redoubled work on ecological mediation of interactions...

Background/Question/Methods How much do limiting similarity and environmental filtering influence community assembly processes? This key question in community ecology has recently been revisited using functional traits, demonstrating that both limiting similarity and habitat filtering can act to structure plant communities, but debate remains on th...

To feed the world without further damaging the planet, Jeffrey Sachs and 24 foodsystem experts call for a global data collection and dissemination network to track the myriad impacts of different farming practices.