1999; Hopkinson et al. 2000). The third gap is located between different disciplines of science, thus it is a disciplinary gap. One particularly booming field 4SC-202 of biodiversity research deals with the analysis of potential consequences of biodiversity loss for ecosystem processes such as seed dispersal or element cycling (e.g. Hooper et al. 2005). While in this functional biodiversity research

species loss serves as the starting point, the questions addressed are usually generic, e.g. related to investigate whether complex ecosystems generally function differently from more simple ones. To answer such questions, researchers often apply strictly controlled experiments, either in the field or in contained laboratory microcosms, e.g. by artificially creating (plant) communities with different levels of diversity and/or structural complexity (e.g. Schmid and Hector 2004). Biodiversity Enzalutamide experiments provide innovative research platforms that may generate hundreds of papers, such as in the case of the Jena Experiment (Roscher et al. 2004). A second recent approach in biodiversity research is that of comparative studies in real landscapes, with plots that are managed differently. Land use is a main driver of biodiversity loss

and comparing the effects of land use on biodiversity and ecosystem processes, such as in the Biodiversity Exploratories (Fischer et al. 2010), again provides a platform for interdisciplinary research that potentially yields outcomes relevant for conservation. However, there appears to be a disciplinary gap between fundamental biodiversity science and conservation science that does not just include differences in the Baricitinib topics being addressed, but apparently there are also different subsets of scientists addressing the different topics. While scientists conducting functional biodiversity research often argue that their work is relevant

to conservation (Hector et al. 2001), this is regularly questioned (Srivastava and Vellend 2005). As a consequence, the importance of functional biodiversity research for conservation is often reduced to providing a general argument for why conservation is necessary for humankind, such as in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that classified the ecosystem services that are potentially adversely affected by a loss in biodiversity (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005a, b). Another example is given by population genetics where fundamental research often focuses on the genetics of natural indigenous grazers, while applied conservation research focuses, for example, on the mechanistic effect of grazing by domestic animals on plant recovery in nature PF-04929113 research buy reserves. A link between these types of research is often lacking.