Charles Darwin and the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning

Abstract

The link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is a relatively new research area motivated by forecasts of ongoing biodiversity loss. However, the intellectual link between biodiversity and ecosystem processes was first inferred by Darwin based on his Principle of Divergence. In the notes for his Big Species Book Darwin explicitly states that communities composed of organisms developed under many and widely differing forms should have higher rates of productivity and decomposition. Darwin also cites supporting evidence in the form of the Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis: a grass garden at Woburn Abbey in the South of England that arguably contains the earliest known ecological experiments.