State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystem, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
Nat Commun. 2021 Sep 9;12(1):5350. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25641-0.
Relationships between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions (that is, ecosystem multifunctionality) are context-dependent. Both plant and soil microbial diversity have been reported to regulate ecosystem multifunctionality, but how their relative importance varies along environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Here, we relate plant and microbial diversity to soil multifunctionality across 130 dryland sites along a 4,000 km aridity gradient in northern China. Our results show a strong positive association between plant species richness and soil multifunctionality in less arid regions, whereas microbial diversity, in particular of fungi, is positively associated with multifunctionality in more arid regions. This shift in the relationships between plant or microbial diversity and soil multifunctionality occur at an aridity level of ∼0.8, the boundary between semiarid and arid climates, which is predicted to advance geographically ∼28% by the end of the current century. Our study highlights that biodiversity loss of plants and soil microorganisms may have especially strong consequences under low and high aridity conditions, respectively, which calls for climate-specific biodiversity conservation strategies to mitigate the effects of aridification.
生物多样性与多种生态系统功能（即生态多功能性）之间的关系取决于具体情况。植物和土壤微生物多样性都被报道可以调节生态系统多功能性，但它们的相对重要性如何沿环境梯度变化仍知之甚少。在这里，我们在中国北方的一个 4000 公里长的干旱梯度上的 130 个旱地站点，将植物和微生物多样性与土壤多功能性联系起来。我们的结果表明，在较不干旱的地区，植物物种丰富度与土壤多功能性之间存在强烈的正相关关系，而在更干旱的地区，微生物多样性，特别是真菌的多样性与多功能性呈正相关。这种植物或微生物多样性与土壤多功能性之间关系的转变发生在干旱程度约为 0.8 的地方，这是半干旱和干旱气候的边界，预计到本世纪末，这一边界将在地理上推进约 28%。我们的研究强调，在低湿度和高湿度条件下，植物和土壤微生物多样性的丧失可能会产生特别强烈的后果，这就需要制定具体气候的生物多样性保护策略来减轻干旱化的影响。
