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It’s a truism to say that diversity is important:

Society places value on the multiple functions of ecosystems from soil fertility to erosion control to wildlife-carrying capacity, and these functions are potentially threatened by ongoing biodiversity losses.

E. S. Zavaleta et al., 2010¹

This year-old paper, evaluated twice on F1000, used the longest-running biodiversity-functioning field experiment to test the effect of species diversity on multiple ecosystem functions. The message is that to understand biodiversity and its effects on the environment we can’t simply measure single, key ecosystem functions—and indeed the level of richness required to sustain multiple ecosystem functions is higher than we supposed.

To put it another way,

So in the general economy of any land, the more widely and perfectly the animals and plants are diversified for different habits of life, so will a greater number of individuals be capable of there supporting themselves.

Which means, as in so many other things, Charles Darwin got there before us.

Many thanks to Nando Boero for bringing this one to our attention.