Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness

Abstract

1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a greater number of species may not always increase overall diversity and productivity of the system. Theoretical work and local empirical studies have shown that the effect of evenness on ecosystem functioning may be especially strong at high richness levels, yet the consistency of this remains untested at a global scale.

2. Here, we used a dataset of forests from across the globe, which includes composition, biomass accumulation and net primary productivity, to explore whether productivity correlates with community evenness and richness in a way that evenness appears to buffer the effect of richness. Specifically, we evaluated whether low levels of evenness in speciose communities correlate with the attenuation of the richness–productivity relationship.

3. We found that tree species richness and evenness are negatively correlated across forests globally, with highly speciose forests typically comprising a few dominant and many rare species. Furthermore, we found that the correlation between diversity and productivity changes with evenness: at low richness, uneven communities are more productive, while at high richness, even communities are more productive.

4. Synthesis. Collectively, these results demonstrate that evenness is an integral component of the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, and that the attenuating effect of richness on forest productivity might be partly explained by low evenness in speciose communities. Productivity generally increases with species richness, until reduced evenness limits the overall increases in community diversity. Our research suggests that evenness is a fundamental component of biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships, and is of critical importance for guiding conservation and sustainable ecosystem management decisions.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Hordijk, I Maynard, DS Hart, SP Lidong, M ter Steege, H Liang, J de‐Miguel, S Nabuurs, G Reich, PB Abegg, M Adou Yao, CY Alberti, G Almeyda Zambrano, AM Alvarado, BV Esteban, A Alvarez‐Loayza, P Alves, LF Ammer, C Antón‐Fernández, C Araujo‐Murakami, A Arroyo, L Avitabile, V Aymard C, GA Baker, T Bałazy, R Banki, O Barroso, J Bastian, ML Bastin, J Birigazzi, L Birnbaum, P Bitariho, R Boeckx, P Bongers, F Bouriaud, O Brancalion, PHS Brandl, S Brienen, R Broadbent, EN Bruelheide, H Bussotti, F Cazzolla Gatti, R César, RG Cesljar, G Chazdon, R Chen, HYH Chisholm, C Cienciala, E Clark, CJ Clark, DB Colletta, G Coomes, D Cornejo Valverde, F Corral‐Rivas, JJ Crim, P Cumming, J Dayanandan, S de Gasper, AL Decuyper, M Derroire, G DeVries, B Djordjevic, I Iêda, A Dourdain, A Nestor Laurier, EO Enquist, B Eyre, T Fandohan, AB Fayle, TM Ferreira, LV Feldpausch, TR Finér, L Fischer, M Fletcher, C Frizzera, L Gamarra, JGP Gianelle, D Glick, HB Harris, D Hector, A Hemp, A Hengeveld, G Hérault, B Herbohn, J Hillers, A Honorio Coronado, EN Hui, C Cho, H Ibanez, T Bin Jung, I Imai, N Jagodzinski, AM Jaroszewicz, B Johanssen, V Joly, CA Jucker, T Karminov, V Kartawinata, K Kearsley, E Kenfack, D Kennard, D Kepfer‐Rojas, S Keppel, G Khan, ML Killeen, T Kim, HS Kitayama, K Köhl, M Korjus, H Kraxner, F Laarmann, D Lang, M Lewis, S Lu, H Lukina, N Maitner, B Malhi, Y Marcon, E Marimon, BS Marimon‐Junior, BH Marshall, AR Martin, E Martynenko, O Meave, JA Melo‐Cruz, O Mendoza, C Merow, C Stanislaw, M Mendoza, AM Moreno, V Mukul, SA Mundhenk, P Nava‐Miranda, MG Neill, D Neldner, V Nevenic, R Ngugi, M Niklaus, PA Oleksyn, J Ontikov, P Ortiz‐Malavasi, E Pan, Y Paquette, A Parada‐Gutierrez, A Parfenova, E Park, M Parren, M Parthasarathy, N Peri, PL Pfautsch, S Phillips, OL https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8993-6168 Picard, N Piedade, MT Piotto, D Pitman, NCA Polo, I Poorter, L Poulsen, AD Poulsen, JR Pretzsch, H Ramirez Arevalo, F Restrepo‐Correa, Z Rodeghiero, M Rolim, S Roopsind, A Rovero, F Rutishauser, E Saikia, P Salas‐Eljatib, C Schall, P Schepaschenko, D Scherer‐Lorenzen, M Schmid, B Schöngart, J Searle, EB Šebeň, V Serra‐Diaz, JM Sheil, D Shvidenko, A Silva‐Espejo, J Silveira, M Singh, J Sist, P Slik, F Sonké, B Souza, AF Stereńczak, K Svenning, J Svoboda, M Swanepoel, B Targhetta, N Tchebakova, N Thomas, R Tikhonova, E Umunay, P Usoltsev, V Valencia, R Valladares, F van der Plas, F Tran, DV Van Nuland, ME Vasquez Martinez, R Verbeeck, H Viana, H Vibrans, AC Vieira, S von Gadow, K Wang, H Watson, J Werner, GDA Wiser, SK Wittmann, F Wortel, V Zagt, R Zawila‐Niedzwiecki, T Zhang, C Zhao, X Zhou, M Zhu, Z Zo‐Bi, IC Crowther, TW
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Keywords:	diversity; ecosystem function and services; evenness; forests; global; productivity; species richness
Dates:	Published: 7 June 2023 Published (online): 2 May 2023 Accepted: 21 January 2023
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/B503384/1 Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation N/A
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	26 May 2023 11:41
Last Modified:	23 May 2024 14:24
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Wiley
Identification Number:	10.1111/1365-2745.14098
Related URLs:	Dataset
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:199542

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Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness

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Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness

Abstract

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