Abstract
The proposed project aims at merging two core fields in contemporary ecology. The first relates to productivity and environmental variation driving biodiversity, and the second considers biodiversity as the independent variable driving productivity patterns. Despite numerous experiments and reviews on these two lines of research there has been no study that has managed to explicitly consider and explain biodiversity as both the cause and consequence of productivity at the same time. Using new theory together with an innovative experimental approach I will study the chicken vs. egg question of productivity and biodiversity. A theoretical model that is currently being developed by Bradley Cardinale suggests that biodiversity can respond to and drive productivity only if (1) productivity on a regional scale affects the number of locally coexisting species, and (2) regional exclusion of species is prevented by e.g. a factor such as spatial heterogeneity. The results have the potential to enhance our understanding of basic mechanisms structuring species assemblages and ecosystem functioning in nature. This is important because ecosystems and their biota provide us with vital goods and services , and the same biota is often altered by changing productivity levels, e.g. due to eutrophication and changes in ocean currents and upwelling patterns.
Sweden