We should not necessarily expect positive relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in observational field data

Abstract Our current, empirical understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function is based on two information sources. First, controlled experiments which show generally positive relationships. Second, observational field data which show variable relationships. This latter source coupled with a lack of observed declines in local biodiversity has led to the argument that biodiversity‐ecosystem functioning relationships may be uninformative for conservation and management. We review ecological theory and re‐analyse several biodiversity datasets to argue that ecosystem function correlations with local diversity in observational field data are often difficult to interpret in the context of biodiversity‐ecosystem function research. This occurs because biotic interactions filter species during community assembly which means that there can be a high biodiversity effect on functioning even with low observed local diversity. Our review indicates that we should not necessarily expect any specific relationship between local biodiversity and ecosystem function in observational field data. Rather, linking predictions from biodiversity‐ecosystem function theory and experiments to observational field data requires considering the pool of species available during colonisation: the local species pool. We suggest that, even without local biodiversity declines, biodiversity loss at regional scales—which determines local species pools—may still negatively affect ecosystem functioning.