Michel Loreau

Mixtures of stably coexisting species overyield

In generalized Lotka–Volterra communities, stable coexistence almost always requires overyielding; in four long-term biodiversity experiments, underyielding raised species-loss odds within two observations (pooled odds ratio 2.61).

Linking biotic interactions to species stability

The paper identifies a simple metric, self-regulation loss (SL), that predicts species stability in ecological communities despite their complexity.

Biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning: disentangling the roles of biomass and effect trait expression

The paper disentangles biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning by separating impacts on total biomass and effect trait expression using a novel decomposition framework applied to three ecosystem functions in grassland plants.

Beyond biomass: how interactions shape species' role for ecosystem functioning

The paper introduces a dynamic contribution metric to assess species' functional roles in ecosystems, showing that rare species can be crucial due to biotic interactions.

Ubiquity of inverted 'gelatinous' ecosystem pyramids in the global ocean

The paper quantifies plankton community structure globally, revealing inverted biomass pyramids dominated by gelatinous organisms and predicting future shifts in oceanic carbon cycles.

A macro-ecological approach to predators' functional response

This paper investigates whether predator functional response follows mass action at macro-ecological scales and finds it follows a power-law with square root dependence on predator-prey densities.