Study: Ecosystems Have Fewer Backup Species Than Assumed

The largest global study of its kind, led by King's College London and Imperial College London, combined 423 published studies and 222,829 data points. Benefits such as pollination, clean water and carbon storage kept rising with biodiversity instead of leveling off, suggesting functional redundancy among species is lower than assumed.

• Analysis pooled 423 studies and 222,829 data points across 23 ecosystem service categories
• Database is more than twice the size of the largest previous effort
• Marine carbon sequestration showed the strongest link to biodiversity
• Coastal flood and erosion protection was least sensitive to species diversity