This article reviews over two decades of
experiments
that have examined how species richness of primary
producers influences the suite of ecological processes that are
controlled
by plants and algae in terrestrial, marine, and
freshwater ecosystems. Using formal meta-analyses, we assess the balance
of
evidence for eight fundamental questions and
corresponding hypotheses about the functional role of producer diversity
in ecosystems.
These include questions about how primary producer
diversity influences the efficiency of resource use and biomass
production
in ecosystems, how primary producer diversity
influences the transfer and recycling of biomass to other trophic groups
in
a food web, and the number of species and spatial
/temporal scales at which diversity effects are most apparent. After
summarizing
the balance of evidence and stating our own
confidence in the conclusions, we outline several new questions that
must now
be addressed.
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