Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across gradients in spatial scale (literature synthesis)

Biodiversity is critical for sustaining ecosystem functioning. Our inference, however, is based mainly on studies that have kept spatial scale constant and environmental heterogeneity to a minimum. We thus still know little about how the role of biodiversity changes with spatial scale and environmental heterogeneity. In this study we used computer simulations, a bacteria experiment and a literature synthesis (this dataset) to test how the relationship between species richness and ecosystem functioning could be expected to change when local patches are aggregated into landscapes of increasing size.