  The Loreau and Hector (2019) Comment on our paper (Pillai and Gouhier, 2019)
failed to address the two core elements of our critique, both the circularity
of the BEF research program, in general, and the mathematical flaws of the
Loreau-Hector partitioning scheme, in particular. Loreau and Hector avoided
dealing with the first part of our critique by arguing against a non-existent
claim that all biodiversity effects could be reduced to coexistence, while the
mathematical flaws in the Loreau-Hector partitioning method that we described
in the second part of our critique were ignored altogether. Here, we address
these misconceptions and demonstrate that all of the claims that were made in
our original paper hold. We conclude that (i) BEF studies need to adopt
baselines that account for coexistence in order to avoid overestimating the
effects of biodiversity and (ii) the LH partitioning method should not be used
unless the linearity of the abundance-ecosystem functioning relationship in
monocultures can be verified for all species.
