The importance of many species has been underestimated. Biodiversity is more important for functioning ecosystems than expected. This is the central result of a recent study by the Technical University of Munich, which was created with the participation of Robert Ptacnik from the WasserCluster Lunz.
Therefore, it makes no sense to protect only individual species for securing individual ecosystem functions. "The influence of individual species only becomes apparent as soon as one examines diverse processes in the ecosystem," says Robert Ptacnik.
The study can be found in the journal "Nature Ecology and Evolution".