Species contributions to single biodiversity values under-estimate whole community contribution to a wider range of values to society.

ABSTRACT: A major task for decision makers is deciding how to consider monetary, cultural and conservation values of biodiversity explicitly when planning sustainable land use. Thus, there is a great need to understand just what "valuing" biodiversity or species really means, e.g. regarding how many and which species are important in providing ecosystem services or other values. Constructing ecosystem-level indices, however, requires weighting the relative contribution of species to the different values. Using farmland birds, we illustrate how species contribute to different biodiversity values, namely utilitarian (pest seed predation potential), cultural (species occurrence in poetry), conservational (declines and rarity) and inherent (all species equal) value. Major contributions to each value are

SUBMITTER: Hiron M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5934388 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature