A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical tofood production. Whether crop yield–related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominantspecies or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 loca-tions), we partition the relative importance of species richness, abundance, and dominance for pollination;biological pest control; and final yields in the context of ongoing land-use change. Pollinator and enemyrichness directly supported ecosystem services in addition to and independent of abundance and domi-nance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due torichness losses of service-providingorganisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintainingthe biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystembenefits to society.