Figure 4. Effect of species richness on ecosystem functions in dynamic communities.

Shown are distributions of 21,461 randomly assembled food webs at equilibrium. Increasing species richness increased total animal biomass (a) but maintained biomass of the plant community at the same levels (b). Intraguild-consumption within the animal community was increased (c), as was the consumption on the plant species (d). Metabolic losses of animals increased (e), while losses of plant species decreased (f). Equations and red lines show fitted power-law models (Methods section). Coefficient of determination R² indicates goodness of fit.