@article {159714, title = {Biodiversity effects on seedling growth are modified by light environment across functional groups.}, journal = {Ecol Appl}, volume = {35}, year = {2025}, month = {2025 Jul}, pages = {e70087}, abstract = {

Numerous studies have shown that biodiversity influences the functioning of ecosystems over space and time. The sensitivity of such biodiversity-ecosystem effects to environmental heterogeneity, however, remains poorly understood. In forests, seedling recruitment is a critical phase of forest dynamics, and this phase is highly sensitive to environmental heterogeneity and biotic interactions with surrounding plants. In closed-canopy forests, local variation in light due to variation in canopy cover can result in heterogeneous microenvironments that can enhance or constrain seedling growth and ultimately forest regeneration. Here, we ask, how do light and seedling diversity influence the growth and biomass gain of seedlings in tropical forests? We tested the effects of and interactions between seedling diversity and light availability on the growth of seedlings consisting of tropical broad-leaved evergreen and deciduous forest species using a fully factorial manipulated experiment in the Andaman Islands, India. We compared results from this manipulated experiment with field observations from a long-term forest plot. We show that during the critical seedling establishment phase, species richness and light availability additively increased biomass accumulation of seedlings in communities consisting of evergreen and deciduous species. Moreover, the positive effect of light on biomass gain was consistent across species in these different functional groups. We conclude that the diversity effect on biomass gain is explained more by species complementarity across conditions rather than by compensatory effects by different species under different light conditions or simple probabilistic effects of including faster growing species in species-rich communities. Taken together, our results show that the potential for biodiversity to increase ecosystem functioning in seedling communities is modified by light availability. Although many factors are often important in designing replanting efforts in forest management or restoration, our results suggest that key factors are likely to be the interaction between neighborhood diversity and canopy-mediated light on forest understory, which can be managed to enhance seedling establishment at the early stages of forestry projects aimed at maintaining forest diversity, composition, and functioning.

}, keywords = {Biodiversity, Biomass, Forests, India, Light, Seedlings, Trees}, issn = {1051-0761}, doi = {10.1002/eap.70087}, author = {Anujan, Krishna and Shabnam, Alisha and Ali, Irfan and Gummadi, Ashok Kumar and Sankaran, Mahesh and Krishnadas, Meghna and Naeem, Shahid} } @article {126681, title = {Environmental heterogeneity modulates the effect of plant diversity on the spatial variability of grassland biomass.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {14}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Mar 31}, pages = {1809}, abstract = {

Plant productivity varies due to environmental heterogeneity, and theory suggests that plant diversity can reduce this variation. While there is strong evidence of diversity effects on temporal variability of productivity, whether this mechanism extends to variability across space remains elusive. Here we determine the relationship between plant diversity and spatial variability of productivity in 83 grasslands, and quantify the effect of experimentally increased spatial heterogeneity in environmental conditions on this relationship. We found that communities with higher plant species richness (alpha and gamma diversity) have lower spatial variability of productivity as reduced abundance of some species can be compensated for by increased abundance of other species. In contrast, high species dissimilarity among local communities (beta diversity) is positively associated with spatial variability of productivity, suggesting that changes in species composition can scale up to affect productivity. Experimentally increased spatial environmental heterogeneity weakens the effect of plant alpha and gamma diversity, and reveals that beta diversity can simultaneously decrease and increase spatial variability of productivity. Our findings unveil the generality of the diversity-stability theory across space, and suggest that reduced local diversity and biotic homogenization can affect the spatial reliability of key ecosystem functions.

}, keywords = {Biodiversity, Biomass, Ecosystem, Grassland, Plants, Reproducibility of Results}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-023-37395-y}, author = {Daleo, Pedro and Alberti, Juan and Chaneton, Enrique J and Iribarne, Oscar and Tognetti, Pedro M and Bakker, Jonathan D and Borer, Elizabeth T and Bruschetti, Mart{\'\i}n and MacDougall, Andrew S and Pascual, Jesus and Sankaran, Mahesh and Seabloom, Eric W and Wang, Shaopeng and Bagchi, Sumanta and Brudvig, Lars A and Catford, Jane A and Dickman, Chris R and Dickson, Timothy L and Donohue, Ian and Eisenhauer, Nico and Gruner, Daniel S and Haider, Sylvia and Jentsch, Anke and Knops, Johannes M H and Lekberg, Ylva and McCulley, Rebecca L and Moore, Joslin L and Mortensen, Brent and Ohlert, Timothy and P{\"a}rtel, Meelis and Peri, Pablo L and Power, Sally A and Risch, Anita C and Rocca, Camila and Smith, Nicholas G and Stevens, Carly and Tamme, Riin and Veen, G F Ciska and Wilfahrt, Peter A and Hautier, Yann} } @article {115013, title = {Richness, not evenness, varies across water availability gradients in grassy biomes on five continents.}, journal = {Oecologia}, volume = {199}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 Jul}, pages = {649-659}, abstract = {

We sought to understand the role that water availability (expressed as an aridity index) plays in determining regional and global patterns of richness and evenness, and in turn how these water availability-diversity relationships may result in different richness-evenness relationships at regional and global scales. We examined relationships between water availability, richness and evenness for eight grassy biomes spanning broad water availability gradients on five continents. Our study found that relationships between richness and water availability switched from positive for drier (South Africa, Tibet and USA) vs. negative for wetter (India) biomes, though were not significant for the remaining biomes. In contrast, only the India biome showed a significant relationship between water availability and evenness, which was negative. Globally, the richness-water availability relationship was hump-shaped, however, not significant for evenness. At the regional scale, a positive richness-evenness relationship was found for grassy biomes in India and Inner Mongolia, China. In contrast, this relationship was weakly concave-up globally. These results suggest that different, independent factors are determining patterns of species richness and evenness in grassy biomes, resulting in differing richness-evenness relationships at regional and global scales. As a consequence, richness and evenness may respond very differently across spatial gradients to anthropogenic changes, such as climate change.

}, keywords = {Biodiversity, China, Ecosystem, Poaceae, Water}, issn = {1432-1939}, doi = {10.1007/s00442-022-05208-6}, author = {Smith, Melinda D and Koerner, Sally E and Avolio, Meghan L and Komatsu, Kimberly J and Eby, Stephanie and Forrestel, Elisabeth J and Collins, Scott L and Wilcox, Kevin R and Ahumada, Rodrigo and Morgan, John W and Oliva, Gabriel and O{\~n}atibia, Gast{\'o}n R and Overbeck, Gerhard E and Peter, Guadalupe and Quiroga, Emiliano and Sankaran, Mahesh and Wu, Jianshuang and Yahdjian, Laura and Yu, Qiang} }