Disturbance and habitat destruction due to human activities is a pervasive problem in near-shore marine ecosystems, and restoration is often used to mitigate losses. A common metric used to evaluate the success of restoration is the return of ecosystem services. Previous research has shown that biodiversity, including genetic diversity, is positively associated with the provision of ecosystem services. We conducted a restoration experiment using sources, techniques, and sites similar to actual large-scale seagrass restoration projects and demonstrated that a small increase in genetic diversity enhanced ecosystem services (invertebrate habitat, increased primary productivity, and nutrient retention). In our experiment, plots with elevated genetic diversity had plants that survived longer, increased in density more quickly, and provided more ecosystem services (invertebrate habitat, increased primary productivity, and nutrient retention). We used the number of alleles per locus as a measure of genetic diversity, which, unlike clonal diversity used in earlier research, can be applied to any organism. Additionally, unlike previous studies where positive impacts of diversity occurred only after a large disturbance, this study assessed the importance of diversity in response to potential environmental stresses (high temperature, low light) along a water–depth gradient. We found a positive impact of diversity along the entire depth gradient. Taken together, these results suggest that ecosystem restoration will significantly benefit from obtaining sources (transplants or seeds) with high genetic diversity and from restoration techniques that can maintain that genetic diversity.

Aim: The urgency for remote, reliable and scalable biodiversity monitoring amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems has sparked worldwide interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), which can track life underwater and on land. However, we lack a unified methodology to report this sampling effort and a comprehensive overview of PAM coverage to gauge its potential as a global research and monitoring tool. To address this gap, we created the Worldwide Soundscapes project, a collaborative network and growing database comprising metadata from 416 datasets across all realms (terrestrial, marine, freshwater and subterranean).Location: Worldwide, 12,343 sites, all ecosystem types.Time Period: 1991 to present.Major Taxa Studied: All soniferous taxa.Methods: We synthesise sampling coverage across spatial, temporal and ecological scales using metadata describing sampling locations, deployment schedules, focal taxa and audio recording parameters. We explore global trends in biological, anthropogenic and geophysical sounds based on 168 selected recordings from 12 ecosystems across all realms.Results: Terrestrial sampling is spatially denser (46 sites per million square kilometre—Mkm²) than aquatic sampling (0.3 and 1.8 sites/Mkm² in oceans and fresh water) with only two subterranean datasets. Although diel and lunar cycles are well sampled across realms, only marine datasets (55%) comprehensively sample all seasons. Across the 12 ecosystems selected for exploring global acoustic trends, biological sounds showed contrasting diel patterns across ecosystems, declined with distance from the Equator, and were negatively correlated with anthropogenic sounds.Main Conclusions: PAM can inform macroecological studies as well as global conservation and phenology syntheses, but representation can be improved by expanding terrestrial taxonomic scope, sampling coverage in the high seas and subterranean ecosystems, and spatio‐temporal replication in freshwater habitats. Overall, this worldwide PAM network holds promise to support cross‐realm biodiversity research and monitoring efforts.