Synthetic ecosystems: an emerging opportunity for science and society?

Abstract

For millenia, humans have modified aspects of natural ecosystems to meet their social, economic and ecological needs. With advancing technology and global movement of species, modification has shifted to designing and creating new ecologies in cityscapes, building interiors, agricultural settings and more. We call intentional ecosystems that combine biodiversity and technology with little to no shared history, synthetic ecosystems. Fields, from microbial ecology to agroecology, build synthetic ecosystems under different names but share the same properties of: Being human‐designed, assembled and controlled, having novel components and/or interactions, and creating systems distinctly different from what came before at a site. Creating synthetic ecosystems represents a design challenge, but also an opportunity for real‐world impact – which we illustrate with a biodiverse, indoor synthetic ecosystem for food production. Overall, synthetic ecosystems may advance socioecological goals in six ways. They can: 1) replace ecological deadzones with living systems (e.g. building green roofs), 2) enhance existing ecosystem processes (e.g. boosting agricultural yields), 3) create new ecosystem functions (e.g. bioelectricity), 4) establish new ecosystem controls (e.g. biological control), 5) foster knowledge synthesis (e.g. testing ecological theory) and 6) reshape human‐nature relationships (e.g. improve wellbeing). To realize these potentials, future work must more fully evaluate whereandwhen synthetic ecosystems are appropriate to build, whatarchitectures and aspects of diversity (biological and technological) make them most functional and how knowledge from across cultures and eras can be integrated in solutions.