Have Ecologists Oversold Biodiversity?

There's a nice overview of the Biodiversity/Ecosystem function debate in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This only takes a couple of minutes to read and is a good background to both the science and the way that this debate has got quite acrimonious at times.

There's an interview with Dave Tilman here that gives you a good idea of the practicalities of working with such large scale experiments. I like the fact that he mentions how many people and how long it takes to do certain tasks. It gives you an idea of the scale of the project. If you want to work at Cedar Creek LTER over the summer here's their internship page.