Not even wrong: Reply to Loreau and Hector

TL;DR

This paper critiques the Loreau-Hector partitioning method and emphasizes the need for baseline adjustments in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning studies to avoid overestimation of effects.

Contribution

It clarifies misconceptions about biodiversity effects and demonstrates the mathematical flaws in the Loreau-Hector partitioning scheme.

Findings

BEF studies require baselines that account for coexistence.

The Loreau-Hector method should only be used with verified linearity.

Original claims about the critique are reaffirmed.

Abstract

The Loreau and Hector (2019) Comment on our paper (Pillai and Gouhier, 2019) failed to address the two core elements of our critique, both the circularity of the BEF research program, in general, and the mathematical flaws of the Loreau-Hector partitioning scheme, in particular. Loreau and Hector avoided dealing with the first part of our critique by arguing against a non-existent claim that all biodiversity effects could be reduced to coexistence, while the mathematical flaws in the Loreau-Hector partitioning method that we described in the second part of our critique were ignored altogether. Here, we address these misconceptions and demonstrate that all of the claims that were made in our original paper hold. We conclude that (i) BEF studies need to adopt baselines that account for coexistence in order to avoid overestimating the effects of biodiversity and (ii) the LH partitioning method should not be used unless the linearity of the abundance-ecosystem functioning relationship in monocultures can be verified for all species.