The loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans, suggests a new report publishing early online on December 27th and in the January 8th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. In a global-scale study, the researchers found some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes, increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there. The sharp increase in ecosystem functioning as species numbers rise suggests that individual species in the deep sea make way for more species or facilitate one another. That’s in contrast to terrestrial-system findings, which have generally shown a linear relationship between diversity and ecosystem functioning, suggesting complementary relationships among species. "Deep-sea ecosystems provide goods (including biomass, bioactive molecules, oil, gas, and minerals) and services (climate regulation, nutrient regeneration and supply to the [upper ocean], and food) and, for their profound involvement in global biogeochemical and ecological processes, are essential for the sustainable functioning of our biosphere and for human wellbeing,” the researchers concluded.

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