Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Which Services Are Most Tied to Biodiversity?

Introduction
Biodiversity provides the living fabric of ecosystems, shaping the resilience, productivity, and functionality of the natural world. While every ecosystem service—food, water, climate regulation, pollination, cultural value—depends to some degree on the diversity of life, certain services are more tightly bound to the presence and variety of species. Understanding these linkages helps guide conservation priorities, land-use planning, and policy design so that human well-being, ecological integrity, and long-term sustainability advance together. This article surveys the principal ecosystem services that are most closely connected to biodiversity, explains the mechanisms behind these linkages, and illustrates them with diverse examples from forests, grasslands, wetlands, oceans, and urban landscapes. The aim is to clarify how protecting species richness and functional diversity translates into tangible benefits for people and the environment.

Table of Contents

• Biodiversity and Pollination Services
• Biodiversity and Food Security
• Biodiversity and Water Regulation
• Biodiversity and Climate Regulation
• Biodiversity and Soil Health and Nutrient Cycling
• Biodiversity and Resilience and Stability
• Biodiversity and Cultural and Recreational Services
• Biodiversity, Disease Regulation, and Health Impacts
• Biodiversity in Coastal and Marine Ecosystems
• Biodiversity and Urban Ecosystems
• Integrating Biodiversity into Policy and Practice

Biodiversity and Pollination Services
Pollination by animals—particularly bees, butterflies, birds, and bats—is a cornerstone of agricultural productivity and wild plant reproduction. The diversity of pollinator species increases the reliability and efficiency of pollination across a landscape. In agricultural systems, diversified pollinator communities enhance yields, improve fruit set, and stabilize production in the face of environmental fluctuations. In natural ecosystems, a rich pollinator guild supports plant reproduction, genetic diversity, and community dynamics, enabling ecosystems to adapt to changing conditions. Mechanisms include complementarity in foraging niches, temporal separation of flowering periods, and ecological redundancy that cushions pollination networks against species loss. Case studies show that landscapes with a mosaic of flowering plant species, hedgerows, and semi-natural habitats sustain higher pollinator diversity and, consequently, more stable yields and plant regeneration.

Biodiversity and Food Security
Beyond pollination, biodiversity contributes to food security through genetic diversity in crops and livestock, as well as the diversity of wild foods that support diets in many regions. Genetic variation within crops provides a reservoir of traits for disease resistance, climate tolerance, and nutritional quality. Landraces and wild relatives are crucial for breeding programs, enabling crops to withstand pests and environmental stressors. In ecosystems, species diversity supports the productivity of food webs, ensuring that primary production remains robust under disturbances. The diversity of edible plant species in traditional agroecosystems and wild habitats also provides nutritional variety, resilience against food shocks, and cultural food knowledge that supports community food security.

Biodiversity and Water Regulation
Water regulation services—catchment protection, flood mitigation, groundwater recharge, and water purification—depend on the diversity of plant, microbial, and animal communities that structure hydrological processes. A diverse set of vegetation types, from deep-rooted trees to dense grasses, improves soil structure, enhances infiltration, reduces surface runoff, and stabilizes sediment fluxes. Microbial diversity within soils and sediments drives nutrient cycling, oxidation-reduction reactions, and contaminant breakdown, contributing to drinking water quality and downstream ecosystem health. Wetlands, marshes, and riparian zones with high biodiversity provide particularly effective natural infrastructure for buffering floods and filtering pollutants.

Biodiversity and Climate Regulation
Global climate regulation hinges on biodiversity through two primary pathways: carbon storage in biomass and soils, and the modulation of albedo and energy balance via ecosystem structure and function. Forests with high species diversity tend to store more carbon in biomass and soils because a variety of species contribute to different root depths, litter qualities, and decomposition rates, leading to more stable and long-term carbon sequestration. Diverse ecosystems also support complex food webs that maintain primary production under climate stress, supporting resilience to droughts, heat waves, and extreme events. Additionally, microbial and mesofaunal diversity influences soil carbon turnover and stabilization, affecting how much carbon remains sequestered over decadal to centennial timescales.

Biodiversity and Soil Health and Nutrient Cycling
Soil biodiversity underpins nutrient cycling, soil structure, and nutrient retention. A rich community of bacteria, archaea, fungi, nematodes, earthworms, and microfauna drives processes such as decomposition, nitrification, mineral weathering, and mycorrhizal symbioses that increase nutrient availability to plants. Functional diversity within soil communities ensures that different soils can accommodate various nutrient inputs and environmental conditions, contributing to soil fertility, crop yields, and ecosystem productivity. Practices that preserve or restore biodiversity—reforestation with diverse species, reduced tillage, cover crops, and organic amendments—enhance soil organic matter, aggregation, and microbial activity, promoting long-term soil health.

Biodiversity and Resilience and Stability
Ecosystem resilience—the capacity to absorb disturbance and recover—often scales with biodiversity. Diverse ecosystems display multiple pathways to maintain function, so when one species declines, others can compensate. This functional redundancy reduces the risk of abrupt collapses and improves the stability of ecosystem services under climate variability, pests, or land-use changes. Biodiversity also enhances adaptive capacity by expanding the range of responses to new stressors, enabling ecosystems to reconfigure and reorganize into alternative states without losing core services. Diversity in trophic levels, genetic variation, and structural complexity all contribute to a more robust and flexible environmental fabric.

Biodiversity and Cultural and Recreational Services
Cultural values, inspiration, and recreational opportunities derive strongly from biodiversity. People connect with the natural world through aesthetics, education, spiritual significance, and aesthetic experiences provided by diverse landscapes. Biodiversity-rich environments—forests with a mosaic of trees and wildlife, coral reefs teeming with life, and urban green spaces with varied flora and fauna—offer opportunities for ecotourism, nature-based recreation, and citizen science. The cultural ecosystem services tied to biodiversity influence identities, traditional knowledge, and social cohesion, reinforcing conservation ethics and sustainable behavior. Maintaining biodiversity thus supports not only ecological health but also social well-being and cultural vitality.

Biodiversity, Disease Regulation, and Health Impacts
Biodiversity modulates disease dynamics in complex ways. High species diversity can dilute disease transmission by reducing encounter rates between hosts and pathogens, a phenomenon known as the dilution effect. In some contexts, however, certain host species may amplify transmission, emphasizing that the relationship is context-dependent. Preserving diverse ecosystems often reduces the risk of spillover events by maintaining balanced, stable communities and limiting pathogen reservoirs. Biodiversity also supports human health indirectly through provisioning of medicines derived from diverse organisms, climate regulation that reduces vector-borne disease risk, and the maintenance of clean water and food resources.

Biodiversity in Coastal and Marine Ecosystems
Coastal and marine ecosystems harbor some of the planet’s richest biodiversity and provide services essential to human livelihoods. Coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, and kelp forests sustain fisheries, protect shorelines, and support nutrient cycling and carbon storage in the oceans. Marine biodiversity underpins food security through culturally and economically important species, while biodiversity loss can lead to reduced fish stocks, degraded water quality, and diminished coastal protection. Oceanic biodiversity also fosters resilience against climate impacts by stabilizing food webs and supporting ecosystem processes that continue to deliver services under changing ocean conditions.

Biodiversity and Urban Ecosystems
Urban biodiversity often travels under the radar but yields substantial benefits. Green roofs, urban trees, parks, and street medians provide habitat for birds, pollinators, and microbes, contributing to air quality improvements, heat island mitigation, stormwater management, and psychological well-being. Urban biodiversity supports children’s learning about nature, fosters community engagement, and enhances aesthetic value. A diverse urban biota also provides a platform for citizen science and local stewardship, linking city residents to broader conservation efforts and ecological literacy.

Integrating Biodiversity into Policy and Practice
To translate biodiversity-ecosystem service linkages into effective outcomes, a suite of policy instruments and practical approaches is needed. Protecting habitat connectivity, establishing landscape-scale conservation plans, and integrating biodiversity metrics into environmental impact assessments help ensure that ecosystem services are preserved or enhanced. Payoffs arise when biodiversity indicators are linked to service outcomes—such as pollination rates, water purification levels, or soil carbon storage—and when governance structures enable cross-sector collaboration among agriculture, water, forestry, health, and urban planning. Restoration programs that prioritize functional diversity—reestablishing key ecological processes through a variety of species—tend to yield more resilient outcomes than those focused on single-species reintroduction. Public awareness campaigns, incentive schemes for biodiversity-friendly practices, and capacity-building for local stewardship further embed biodiversity considerations into everyday decision-making.

Final reflections
The strongest connections between biodiversity and ecosystem services emerge where species richness and functional diversity underpin the processes that generate, regulate, and sustain the benefits humans rely on. Recognizing these linkages helps identify priority habitats and management actions that maximize service delivery while maintaining ecological integrity. By safeguarding the variety of life across ecosystems—from forests and wetlands to oceans and cities—societies strengthen their resilience to climate change, food and water security, and cultural vitality, creating a more sustainable balance between human needs and the natural world.