It is not just how many species are lost, but which ones disappear first

Shun Nonaka, Yokohama National University in Japan, discusses his article: Non-random species loss weakens functional diversity and species asynchrony, destabilizing grassland communities Why does the order of species loss matter? When we think about biodiversity loss, we often ask a simple question: how many species are disappearing? This is important, but it is not the…

Diversity enhances forest productivity through its effect on the number of trees within forests.

Xavier Morin, CEFE, CNRS, University of Montpellier, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France, discusses his article: More species, more trees: The role of tree packing in promoting forest productivity The effect of tree species diversity on forest productivity is now well-known. On average, plots with more species (in mixed forests) have a greater net productivity than plots with…

Editor’s Choice: Elegance in simplicity – a useful new way to quantify plant diversity dynamics

The Editor’s Choice article for Volume 107 Issue 5 is a study by Zhang et al., which outlines their new SRUD approach for measuring plant diversity dynamics. Associate Editor, Hans Cornelissen, discusses the importance of this new method. Many thousands of researchers have been concerned with what drives and threatens biodiversity. They have investigated whether biodiversity provides benefits…