Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Wellbeing An Ecological and Economic Perspective

Shahid Naeem is Professor of Ecology and Chair, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University. Dr. Naeem pioneered experimental tests of the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem function (Naeem et al. 1994) and co-chaired the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Biodiversity Synthesis Report (Duraiappah and Naeem 2005).

Daniel Bunker is an Assistant Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark, New Jersey, USA). Dr. Bunker is co-director of the BioMERGE project and the TraitNet project. He focuses on understanding the effects of global climate change on species diversity and composition, and the concomitant effects on ecosystem functioning and services.

Andy Hector is a community ecologist interested in the links between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In 2003 he was appointed Assistant Professor within the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Zurich where he is currently undergoing tenure review for a full Professorship.

Michel Loreau is Full Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in theoretical ecology at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). He has won several scientific prizes, including the International Ecology Institute Prize and the Silver Medal of the National Centre for Scientific Research (France), and has been a member of numerous national and international scientific committees such as chairing the Scientific Committee of DIVERSITAS and the Steering Committee of the European Science Foundation programme (LINKECOL).

Charles Perrings is Professor of Environmental Economics, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University. He has served as President of the International Society for Ecological Economics and as Vice Chair of the Scientific Committee of Diversitas. He is also the 2008 winner of the Kenneth E. Boulding Prize for ecological economics.