title: Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services.
abstract: Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences. We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales. Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity. Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average. We conclude that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 4J1. bworm@dal.ca
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Worm
authors.forename: Edward B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Barbier
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Beaumont
authors.forename: J Emmett
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Duffy
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Folke
authors.forename: Benjamin S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Halpern
authors.forename: Jeremy B C
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Jackson
authors.forename: Heike K
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Lotze
authors.forename: Fiorenza
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Micheli
authors.forename: Stephen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Palumbi
authors.forename: Enric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sala
authors.forename: Kimberley A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Selkoe
authors.forename: John J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Stachowicz
authors.forename: Reg
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Watson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D016208:Databases, Factual; D017753:Ecosystem; D056890:Eukaryota; D005398:Fisheries; D005399:Fishes; D005544:Forecasting; D007448:Invertebrates; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D010944:Plants; D011157:Population Dynamics; D017747:Seafood; D012623:Seawater; D014876:Water Pollution