Healthy Ecosystems Need Diverse Habitats, Not Just Species Diversity, Study Shows (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Healthy Ecosystems Need Diverse Habitats, Not Just Species Diversity, Study Shows

Caption

Schematic figure illustrating the experimental design. The habitats 'Sandy beach,' 'Silty mud,' 'Cyanobacterial mats' and 'Ruppia meadows' were collected from shallow-water sediment ecosystems by sampling intact cores in the field. The cores were then arranged randomly into ecosystems with four cores each consisting of one, two, three, and four habitat types, respectively. The artificial ecosystems were placed in a greenhouse with a continuous flow of coastal surface water. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Feb. 8, 2017, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by C. Alsterberg at University of Gothenburg in Göteborg, Sweden, and colleagues was titled, 'Habitat diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality -- The importance of direct and indirect effects.'

Credit

[Credit: Alsterberg <i>et al.</i> Sci. Adv. 2017;3:e1601475]

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