A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production

Human land use threatens global biodiversityand compromises multiple ecosystemfunctions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem servicescan be maintained by few abundant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 crop systems, we partition the relative importance of abundance and species richness for pollination, biological pest controland final yields in the context of on-going land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem servicesindependent of abundance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem serviceswas due to richness losses of service-providingorganisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem serviceproviders is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystembenefits to society.