Climate reverses directionality in the richness-abundance relationship across the World's main forest biomes

Jaime Madrigal-Gonzalez; Joaquin Calatayud; Juan A Ballesteros-Canovas; Adrian Escudero; Luis Cayuela; Marta Rueda; Paloma Ruiz-Benito; Asier Herrero; Cristina Aponte; Rodrigo Sagardia; Andrew J Plumptre; Sylvain Dupire; Carlos Espinosa; Olga Tutubalina; Moe Myint; Luciano Pataro; Jerome Lopez-Saez; Manuel J Macia; Meinrad Abegg; Miguel A Zavala; Adolfo Quesada-Roman; Mauricio Vega-Araya; Elena Golubeva; Yuliya Timokhina; Markus Stoffel

Journal article

Climate reverses directionality in the richness-abundance relationship across the World's main forest biomes

Jaime Madrigal-Gonzalez, Joaquin Calatayud, Juan A Ballesteros-Canovas, Adrian Escudero, Luis Cayuela, Marta Rueda, Paloma Ruiz-Benito, Asier Herrero, Cristina Aponte, Rodrigo Sagardia, Andrew J Plumptre, Sylvain Dupire, Carlos Espinosa, Olga Tutubalina, Moe Myint, Luciano Pataro, Jerome Lopez-Saez, Manuel J Macia, Meinrad Abegg, Miguel A Zavala Show all

Nature Communications | NATURE RESEARCH | Published : 2020

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19460-y

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Abstract

More tree species can increase the carbon storage capacity of forests (here referred to as the more species hypothesis) through increased tree productivity and tree abundance resulting from complementarity, but they can also be the consequence of increased tree abundance through increased available energy (more individuals hypothesis). To test these two contrasting hypotheses, we analyse the most plausible pathways in the richness-abundance relationship and its stability along global climatic gradients. We show that positive effect of species richness on tree abundance only prevails in eight of the twenty-three forest regions considered in this study. In the other forest regions, any benefit..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Cristina Aponte Author Ecosystem and Forest Sciences

Grants

Awarded by REMEDINAL TE-CM

Awarded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Awarded by MICINN, Spain

Awarded by Basque Country Government

Funding Acknowledgements

A.E. was supported by REMEDINAL TE-CM (S2018/EMT-4338). L.C. and M.J.M. were supported through two grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CGL2013-45634-P, CGL2016-75414-P). M.A.Z. was supported by grant RTI2018-096884-B-C32 (MICINN, Spain). C.A. was supported by the Victorian DELWP iFER (Integrated Forest Ecosystem Research) programme. A.H. was supported by the University of Alcala (Own Research Programme 2019 Postdoctoral Grant) and Basque Country Government funding support to FisioClimaCO2 (IT1022-16) research group. We thank the MITECO and MAPA (Spain) for granting access to the Spanish Forest Inventory Data.