PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Yuanyuan Huang
AU  - Yuxin Chen
AU  - Nadia Castro-Izaguirre
AU  - Martin Baruffol
AU  - Matteo Brezzi
AU  - Anne Lang
AU  - Ying Li
AU  - Werner Härdtle
AU  - Goddert von Oheimb
AU  - Xuefei Yang
AU  - Kequan Pei
AU  - Sabine Both
AU  - Xiaojuan Liu
AU  - Bo Yang
AU  - David Eichenberg
AU  - Thorsten Assmann
AU  - Jürgen Bauhus
AU  - Thorsten Behrens
AU  - Francois Busçot
AU  - Xiao-Yong Chen
AU  - Douglas Chesters
AU  - Bing-Yang Ding
AU  - Walter Durka
AU  - Alexandra Erfmeier
AU  - Jingyun Fang
AU  - Markus Fischer
AU  - Liang-Dong Guo
AU  - Dali Guo
AU  - Jessica L.M. Gutknecht
AU  - Jin-Sheng He
AU  - Chun-Ling He
AU  - Andy Hector
AU  - Lydia Hönig
AU  - Ren-Yong Hu
AU  - Alexandra-Maria Klein
AU  - Peter Kuehn
AU  - Yu Liang
AU  - Stefan Michalski
AU  - Michael Scherer-Lorenzen
AU  - Karsten Schmidt
AU  - Thomas Scholten
AU  - Andreas Schuldt
AU  - Xuezheng Shi
AU  - Man-Zhi Tan
AU  - Zhiyao Tang
AU  - Stefan Trogisch
AU  - Zhengwen Wang
AU  - Erik Welk
AU  - Christian Wirth
AU  - Tesfaye Wubet
AU  - Wenhua Xiang
AU  - Jiye Yan
AU  - Mingjian Yu
AU  - Xiao-Dong Yu
AU  - Jiayong Zhang
AU  - Shouren Zhang
AU  - Naili Zhang
AU  - Hong-Zhang Zhou
AU  - Chao-Dong Zhu
AU  - Li Zhu
AU  - Helge Bruelheide
AU  - Keping Ma
AU  - Pascal A. Niklaus
AU  - Bernhard Schmid
TI  - Strong positive biodiversity–productivity relationships in a subtropical forest experiment
AID  - 10.1101/206722
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 206722
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/20/206722.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/20/206722.full
AB  - Forest ecosystems contribute substantially to global terrestrial primary productivity and climate regulation, but, in contrast to grasslands, experimental evidence for a positive biodiversity-productivity relationship in highly diverse forests is still lacking1. Here, we provide such evidence from a large forest biodiversity experiment with a novel design2 in subtropical China. Productivity (stand-level tree basal area, aboveground volume and carbon and their annual increment) increased linearly with the logarithm of tree species richness. Additive partitioning3 showed that increasing positive complementarity effects combined with weakening negative selection effects caused a strengthening of the relationship over time. In 2-species mixed stands, complementary effects increased with functional distance and selection effects with vertical crown dissimilarity between species. Understorey shrubs reduced stand-level tree productivity, but this effect of competition was attenuated by shrub species richness, indicating that a diverse understorey may facilitate overall ecosystem functioning. Identical biodiversity-productivity relationships were found in plots of different size, suggesting that extrapolation to larger scales is possible. Our results highlight the potential of multi-species afforestation strategies to simultaneously contribute to mitigation of climate change and biodiversity restoration.