Unimodal productivity–biodiversity relationship along the gradient of multidimensional resources across Chinese grasslands. Issue 12 (18th August 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Yanfen; Du, Jianqing; Pang, Zhe; Liu, Yali; Xue, Kai; Hautier, Yann; Zhang, Biao; Tang, Li; Jiang, Lili; Ji, Baoming; Xu, Xingliang; Zhang, Jing; Hu, Ronghai; Zhou, Shutong; Wang, Fang; Che, Rongxiao; Wang, Di; Zhou, Chaoting; Cui, Xiaoyong; Eisenhauer, Nico; Hao, Yanbin
• Is Part Of: National science review. Volume 9:Issue 12(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-08-18
• Subjects: productivity–biodiversity relationship -- resource diversity -- plant strategies -- grassland; Science -- Periodicals; 505
• DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwac165
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2095-5138

Abstract

Abstract: Resources can affect plant productivity and biodiversity simultaneously and thus are key drivers of their relationships in addition to plant–plant interactions. However, most previous studies only focused on a single resource while neglecting the nature of resource multidimensionality. Here we integrated four essential resources for plant growth into a single metric of resource diversity (RD) to investigate its effects on the productivity–biodiversity relationship (PBR) across Chinese grasslands. Results showed that habitats differing in RD have different PBRs—positive in low-resource habitats, but neutral in medium- and high-resource ones—while collectively, a weak positive PBR was observed. However, when excluding direct effects of RD on productivity and biodiversity, the PBR in high-resource habitats became negative, which leads to a unimodal instead of a positive PBR along the RD gradient. By integrating resource effects and changing plant–plant interactions into a unified framework with the RD gradient, our work contributes to uncovering underlying mechanisms for inconsistent PBRs at large scales. Abstract : When the multidimensional resource gradient was considered, the productivity-biodiversity relationship across Chinese grasslands was revealed to be unimodal rather than positive linear or irrelevant which were suggested by previous studies.