Chen Chen, Xiao Wenya, Chen Han Y H
Faculty of Natural Resources Management, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Nature. 2025 Feb;638(8050):435-440. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08407-8. Epub 2025 Jan 8.
Positive effects of plant diversity on productivity have been globally demonstrated and explained by two main effects: complementarity effects and selection effects. However, plant diversity experiments have shown substantial variation in these effects, with driving factors poorly understood. On the basis of a meta-analysis of 452 experiments across the globe, we show that productivity increases on average by 15.2% from monocultures to species mixtures with an average species richness of 2.6; net biodiversity effects are stronger in grassland and forest experiments and weaker in container, cropland and aquatic ecosystems. Of the net biodiversity effects, complementarity effects and selection effects contribute 65.6% and 34.4%, respectively. Complementarity effects increase with phylogenetic diversity, the mixing of nitrogen-fixing and non-nitrogen-fixing species and the functional diversity of leaf nitrogen contents, which indicate the key roles of niche partitioning, biotic feedback and abiotic facilitation in complementarity effects. More positive selection effects occur with higher species biomass inequality in their monocultures. Complementarity effects increase over time, whereas selection effects decrease over time, and they remain consistent across global variations in climates. Our results provide key insights into understanding global variations in plant diversity effects on productivity and underscore the importance of integrating both complementarity and selection effects into strategies for biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration.
植物多样性对生产力的积极影响已在全球范围内得到证实，并由两种主要效应来解释：互补效应和选择效应。然而，植物多样性实验表明这些效应存在很大差异，其驱动因素却鲜为人知。基于对全球452个实验的荟萃分析，我们发现，从单一种植到平均物种丰富度为2.6的物种混合种植，生产力平均提高了15.2%；净生物多样性效应在草地和森林实验中更强，而在容器、农田和水生生态系统中较弱。在净生物多样性效应中，互补效应和选择效应分别占65.6%和34.4%。互补效应随着系统发育多样性、固氮和非固氮物种的混合以及叶片氮含量的功能多样性而增加，这表明生态位分化、生物反馈和非生物促进在互补效应中发挥着关键作用。单一种植中物种生物量不平等程度越高，选择效应越积极。互补效应随时间增加，而选择效应随时间减少，并且它们在全球气候差异中保持一致。我们的研究结果为理解植物多样性对生产力影响的全球差异提供了关键见解，并强调了将互补效应和选择效应纳入生物多样性保护和生态恢复策略的重要性。
