State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, 510275, Guangzhou, China.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto-Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, ON, M1C 1A4, Canada.
Nat Commun. 2019 Jul 19;10(1):3207. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11191-z.
The effect of biodiversity on primary productivity has been a hot topic in ecology for over 20 years. Biodiversity-productivity relationships in natural ecosystems are highly variable, although positive relationships are most common. Understanding the conditions under which different relationships emerge is still a major challenge. Here, by analyzing HerbDivNet data, a global survey of natural grasslands, we show that biodiversity stabilizes rather than increases plant productivity in natural grasslands at the global scale. Our results suggest that the effect of species richness on productivity shifts from strongly positive in low-productivity communities to strongly negative in high-productivity communities. Thus, plant richness maintains community productivity at intermediate levels. As a result, it stabilizes plant productivity against environmental heterogeneity across space. Unifying biodiversity-productivity and biodiversity-spatial stability relationships at the global scale provides a new perspective on the functioning of natural ecosystems.
生物多样性对初级生产力的影响是生态学 20 多年来的热门话题。尽管正相关关系最为常见，但自然生态系统中的生物多样性-生产力关系变化多样。了解不同关系出现的条件仍然是一个主要挑战。在这里，通过分析 HerbDivNet 数据，这是对全球天然草原的一项调查，我们表明，在全球范围内，生物多样性使天然草原的植物生产力稳定，而不是增加。我们的研究结果表明，物种丰富度对生产力的影响从低生产力群落的强烈正相关转变为高生产力群落的强烈负相关。因此，植物丰富度维持了社区生产力在中等水平。结果，它稳定了植物生产力，缓解了跨空间的环境异质性。在全球范围内统一生物多样性-生产力和生物多样性-空间稳定性关系，为自然生态系统的功能提供了一个新视角。
