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SCIENCE

Discovering the patterns that shape the living world and the interactions between living and non-living beings has been both a passion and a profession for me. Ecology has 6 the fascinating characteristic of being an integrative science, drawing on almost all other disciplines, whether philosophy, mathematics, physics or biology. It is this integrative nature, coupled with the emergence of the major ecological challenges of our time, that motivated my interest in scientific ecology.

Although my research in ecology has been very diverse, it has revolved around one general objective: to establish the theoretical foundations for a new ecological synthesis that integrates the divergent perspectives of the various sub-disciplines of ecology. My book "From populations to ecosystems" outlines the main thrust of this synthesis. In my view, theory is a powerful tool for developing, clarifying and generalising principles, concepts and hypotheses about how the real world works. I have therefore always favoured close interaction between mathematical models and empirical or experimental studies of highly diverse ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic.

My most important research topic has been the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and the ecological and societal consequences of biodiversity loss. I have contributed significantly to the emergence and development of this new field of research, not only through my scientific work, but also through the responsibilities I have taken on in numerous national and international initiatives. However, I have also been interested in many other issues, in particular (1) the role of spatial connections in the dynamics and functioning of ecological systems, (2) the mutual constraints exerted by species evolution and ecosystem functioning, and (3) the dynamics and sustainability of interactions between humans and nature. Finally, I have advocated for the emergence of an integrative biodiversity science that transcends disciplinary boundaries and worked to strengthen the links between science and policy in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem services, as evidenced by my book "The challenges of biodiversity science".

All of this work has resulted in more than 500 publications, including a dozen books and hundreds of papers in scientific journals. A selection of representative articles is provided below. For those interested, a more complete bibliography can be found on the following websites :
> Station d’Ecologie Théorique et Expérimentale (SETE) du CNRS
> Google Scholar

My research is characterised by close interaction between mathematical models and experimental studies — here, a mathematical model and an experiment on the consequences of biodiversity loss for ecosystem functioning.

Selected papers
 

  1. Yachi, S. & Loreau, M., 1999. — Biodiversity and ecosystem productivity in a fluctuating environment: the insurance hypothesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 96: 1463–1468. 

  2. Hector, A., Schmid, B., Beierkuhnlein, C., Caldeira, M. C., Diemer, M., Dimitrakopoulos, P. G., Finn, J. A., Freitas, H., Giller, P. S., Good, J., Harris, R., Högberg, P., Huss-Danell, K., Joshi, J., Jumpponen, A., Körner, C., Leadley, P. W., Loreau, M., Minns, A., Mulder, C. P. H., O’Donovan, G., Otway, S. J., Pereira, J. S., Prinz, A., Read, D. J., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Schulze, E.-D., Siamantziouras, A.-S. D., Spehn, E. M., Terry, A. C., Troumbis, A. Y., Woodward, F. I., Yachi, S. & Lawton, J. H., 1999. — Plant diversity and productivity experiments in European grasslands. Science, 286: 1123–1127. 

  3. Hulot, F. D., Lacroix, G., Lescher-Moutoué, F. & Loreau, M., 2000. — Functional diversity governs ecosystem response to nutrient enrichment. Nature, 405: 340344. 

  4. Loreau, M., 2000. — Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning : recent theoretical advances. Oikos, 91: 3–17. 

  5. Loreau, M. & Hector, A., 2001. — Partitioning selection and complementarity in biodiversity experiments. Nature, 412: 72–76 & 413: 548. 

  6. Loreau, M., Naeem, S., Inchausti, P., Bengtsson, J., Grime, J. P., Hector, A., Hooper, D. U., Huston, M. A., Raffaelli, D., Schmid, B., Tilman, D. & Wardle, D. A., 2001. — Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning : current knowledge and future challenges. Science, 294: 804–808. 

  7. Loreau, M., Mouquet, N. & Gonzalez, A., 2003. — Biodiversity as spatial insurance in heterogeneous landscapes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100: 12765–12770. 

  8. Mouquet, N. & Loreau, M., 2003. — Community patterns in source–sink metacommunities. The American Naturalist, 162: 544–557. 

  9. Leibold, M. A., Holyoak, M., Mouquet, N., Amarasekare, P., Chase, J. M., Hoopes, M. F., Holt, R. D., Shurin, J. B., Law, R., Tilman, D., Loreau, M. & Gonzalez, A., 2004. — The metacommunity concept: a framework for multi-scale community ecology. Ecology Letters, 7: 601–613. 

  10. Hooper, D. U., Chapin, F. S. III, Ewel, J. J., Hector, A., Inchausti, P., Lavorel, S., Lawton, J. H., Lodge, D. M., Loreau, M., Naeem, S., Schmid, B., Setälä, H., Symstad, A. J., Vandermeer, J. & Wardle, D. A., 2005. — Effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning: a consensus of current knowledge. Ecological Monographs, 75: 3–35. 

  11. Loeuille, N. & Loreau, M., 2005. — Evolutionary emergence of size-structured food webs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102: 5761–5766. 

  12. Duffy, J. E., Cardinale, B. J., France, K. E., McIntyre, P. B., Thébault, E. & Loreau, M., 2007. — The functional role of biodiversity in ecosystems: incorporating trophic complexity. Ecology Letters, 10: 522–538. 

  13. Fussmann, G. F., Loreau, M. & Abrams, P. A., 2007. — Eco-evolutionary dynamics of communities and ecosystems. Functional Ecology, 21: 465–477. 

  14. Cardinale, B. J., Wright, J. P., Cadotte, M. W., Carroll, I. T., Hector, A., Srivastava, D. S., Loreau, M. & Weis, J. J., 2007. — Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time because of species complementarity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104: 18123–18128. 

  15. Loreau, M., 2010. — Linking biodiversity and ecosystems: towards a unifying ecological theory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365: 49–60. 

  16. Isbell, F., Calcagno, V., Hector, A., Connolly, J., Harpole, W. S., Reich, P. B., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Schmid, B., Tilman, D., van Ruijven, J., Weigelt, A., Wilsey, B. J., Zavaleta, E. S. & Loreau, M., 2011. — High plant diversity is needed to maintain ecosystem services. Nature, 477: 199–202. 

  17. Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., Hooper, D. U., Perrings, C., Venail, P., Narwani, A., Mace, G. M., Tilman, D., Wardle, D. A., Kinzig, A. P., Daily, G. C., Loreau, M., Grace, J. B., Larigauderie, A., Srivastava, D. S. & Naeem, S., 2012. — Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature, 486: 59–67 & 489: 326. 

  18. Loreau, M. & de Mazancourt, C., 2013. — Biodiversity and ecosystem stability: a synthesis of underlying mechanisms. Ecology Letters, 16, Supplement 1: 106–115. 

  19. Hatton, I. A., McCann, K. S., Fryxell, J. M., Davies, T. J., Smerlak, M., Sinclair, A. R. E. & Loreau, M., 2015. — The predator–prey power law: biomass scaling across terrestrial and aquatic biomes. Science, 349: 1070 & aac6284. 

  20. Isbell, F., Craven, D., Connolly, J., Loreau, M., Schmid, B., Beierkuhnlein, C., Bezemer, T. M., Bonin, C., Bruelheide, H., de Luca, E., Ebeling, A., Griffin, J. N., Guo, Q., Hautier, Y., Hector, A., Jentsch, A., Kreyling, J., Lanta, V., Manning, P., Meyer, S. T., Mori, A. S., Naeem, S., Niklaus, P. A., Polley, H. W., Reich, P. B., Roscher, C., Seabloom, E. W., Smith, M. D., Thakur, M. P., Tilman, D., Tracy, B. F., van der Putten, W. H., van Ruijven, J., Weigelt, A., Weisser, W. W., Wilsey, B. & Eisenhauer, N., 2015. — Biodiversity increases the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate extremes. Nature, 526: 574–577. 

  21. Wang, S. & Loreau, M., 2016. — Biodiversity and ecosystem stability across scales in metacommunities. Ecology Letters, 19: 510–518. 

  22. Gonzalez, A., Cardinale, B. J., Allington, G. R. H., Byrnes, J., Endsley, K. A., Brown, D. G., Hooper, D. U., Isbell, F., O’Connor, M. I. & Loreau, M., 2016. — Estimating local biodiversity change: a critique of papers claiming no net loss of local diversity. Ecology, 97: 1949–1960. 

  23. Isbell, F., Gonzalez, A., Loreau, M., Cowles, J., Díaz, S., Hector, A., Mace, G. M., Wardle, D. A., O’Connor, M. I., Duffy, J. E., Turnbull, L. A., Thompson, P. L. & Larigauderie, A., 2017. — Linking the influence and dependence of people on biodiversity across scales. Nature, 546: 65–72. 

  24. Barbier, M., Arnoldi, J.-F., Bunin, G. & Loreau, M., 2018. — Generic assembly patterns in complex ecological communities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115: 2156–2161. 

  25. Arnoldi, J.-F., Loreau, M. & Haegeman, B., 2019. — The inherent multidimensionality of temporal variability :  how common and rare species shape stability patterns. Ecology Letters, 22: 1557–1567. 

  26. Hatton, I. A., Dobson, A. P., Storch, D., Galbraith, E. D. & Loreau, M., 2019. — Linking scaling laws across eukaryotes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116: 21616–21622. 

  27. Gonzalez, A., Germain, R. M., Srivastava, D. S., Filotas, E., Dee, L. E., Gravel, D., Thompson, P. L., Isbell, F., Wang, S., Kéfi, S., Montoya, J, Zelnik, Y. R. & Loreau, M., 2020. — Scaling-up biodiversity–ecosystem functioning research. Ecology Letters, 23: 757–776. 

  28. Mori, A. S., Dee, L. E., Gonzalez, A., Ohashi, H., Cowles, J., Wright, A. J., Loreau, M., Hautier, Y., Newbold, T., Reich, P. B., Matsui, T., Takeuchi, W., Okada, K., Seidl, R. & Isbell, F., 2021. — Biodiversity–productivity relationships are key to nature-based climate solutions. Nature Climate Change, 11: 543–550. 

  29. Loreau, M., Barbier, M., Filotas, E., Gravel, D., Isbell, F., Miller, S. J., Montoya, J. M., Wang, S., Aussenac, R., Germain, R., Thompson, P. L., Gonzalez, A. & Dee, L. E.,  2021. — Biodiversity as insurance: from concept to measurement and application. Biological Reviews, 96: 2333–2354. 

  30. Barragan-Jason, G., de Mazancourt, C., Parmesan, C., Singer, M. C. & Loreau, M., 2022. — Human–nature connectedness as a pathway to sustainability: a global meta-analysis. Conservation Letters, 15: e12852. 

  31. Feng, Y., Schmid, B., Loreau, M., Forrester, D. I., Fei, S., Zhu, J., Tang, Z., Zhu, J., Hong, P., Ji, C., Shi, Y., Su, H., Xiong, X., Xiao, J., Wang, S. & Fang, J., 2022. — Multispecies forest plantations outyield monocultures across a broad range of conditions. Science, 376: 865–868. 

  32. Henderson, K. & Loreau, M., 2023. — A model of Sustainable Development Goals: challenges and opportunities in promoting human well-being and environmental sustainability. Ecological Modelling, 475: 110164. 

  33. Liang, M., Yang, Q., Chase, J. M., Isbell, F., Loreau, M., Schmid, B., Seabloom, E. W., Tilman, D. & Wang, S., 2025. — Unifying spatial scaling laws of biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Science, 387: 1271 & eadl2373. 

  34. Pigot, A. L., Dee, L. E., Richardson, A. J., Cooper, D. L. M., Eisenhauer, N., Gregory, R. D., Lewis, S. L., Macgregor, C. J., Massimino, D., Maynard, D. S., Phillips, H. R. P., Rillo, M., Loreau, M. & Haegeman, B., 2025. — Macroecological rules predict how biomass scales with species richness in nature. Science, 387: 1272–1276. 

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