> To date, however, evidence for the value of ecosystem services is sparse
and inconclusive.

There's no doubt that the value of bee-provided services has been generally
overstated, by perhaps as much as an order of magnitude.

The firm and irrefutable proof of the massive value of "ecosystem services"
is provided by the many costly and time-consuming attempts made by
multi-national corporations to patent genetics found in these ecosystems, a
scheme which is generally called "biopiracy".  It used to be that the most
annoying and ill-prepared people one found in remote places were
missionaries trying to export fundamentalist Christian dogma, now it has
become grad students all trying to find a "witch doctor" with a "cure for
cancer".  

These callow youth literally bring umbrellas to the rain forest, and wonder
why a bunch of people all start stomping Garmonts and Altimas to keep time
and singing Tom Waits lyrics "It's a battered old suitcase, a hotel
someplace, and a wound that will never heal..." when they enter any group
setting.   It is great fun to watch their faces when after several day's
very hard journey to the literal "depths of darkest Peru", a Huni Kui healer
on the Brazil/Peru border removes an IBM Thinkpad from its handwoven
Humaita-pattern case, hooks it up to the solar panel and an ancient
Sat-Phone, and starts a Skype video call with a doctor at Mass General in
Boston about the health of a newborn, and even correctly pronounces
"Bahhhstan".

Here's a good overview of the biopiracy situation 
http://indigenousknowledgeproject.org/biopiracy

Here's the AAAS database of biopiracy targets, the "Traditional Ecological
Knowledge Prior Art Database"
http://ip.aaas.org/tekindex.nsf/TEKPAD?OpenFrameSet




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