TY - JOUR

T1 - Neighbourhood interactions drive overyielding in mixed-species tree communities

AU - Fichtner, Andreas

AU - Härdtle, Werner

AU - Bruehlheide, Helge

AU - Kunz, Matthias

AU - Li, Ying

AU - von Oheimb, Goddert

N1 - Funding Information: We are grateful to the many workers and students who helped to conduct the tree inventories and to all members of the BEF-China consortium who coordinated and helped with the establishment and maintenance of the experiment. We acknowledge support by the German Research Foundation and the Open Access Publication Funds of the SLUB/TU Dresden. This research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG FOR 891/1-3, HA 5450/1-2, BR 1698/9-3 and OH 198/2-3). Publisher Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s).

PY - 2018/12/1

Y1 - 2018/12/1

N2 - Theory suggests that plant interactions at the neighbourhood scale play a fundamental role in regulating biodiversity-productivity relationships (BPRs) in tree communities. However, empirical evidence of this prediction is rare, as little is known about how neighbourhood interactions scale up to influence community BPRs. Here, using a biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiment, we provide insights into processes underlying BPRs by demonstrating that diversity-mediated interactions among local neighbours are a strong regulator of productivity in species mixtures. Our results show that local neighbourhood interactions explain over half of the variation in observed community productivity along a diversity gradient. Overall, individual tree growth increased with neighbourhood species richness, leading to a positive BPR at the community scale. The importance of local-scale neighbourhood effects for regulating community productivity, however, distinctly increased with increasing community species richness. Preserving tree species diversity at the local neighbourhood scale, thus seems to be a promising way for promoting forest productivity.

AB - Theory suggests that plant interactions at the neighbourhood scale play a fundamental role in regulating biodiversity-productivity relationships (BPRs) in tree communities. However, empirical evidence of this prediction is rare, as little is known about how neighbourhood interactions scale up to influence community BPRs. Here, using a biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiment, we provide insights into processes underlying BPRs by demonstrating that diversity-mediated interactions among local neighbours are a strong regulator of productivity in species mixtures. Our results show that local neighbourhood interactions explain over half of the variation in observed community productivity along a diversity gradient. Overall, individual tree growth increased with neighbourhood species richness, leading to a positive BPR at the community scale. The importance of local-scale neighbourhood effects for regulating community productivity, however, distinctly increased with increasing community species richness. Preserving tree species diversity at the local neighbourhood scale, thus seems to be a promising way for promoting forest productivity.

KW - Ecosystems Research

KW - plant interactions

KW - neighbourhood interactions

KW - Biodiversity

KW - Biodiversity

KW - Community ecology

KW - Forest ecology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044440478&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-03529-w

DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-03529-w

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 29559628

VL - 9

JO - Nature Communications

JF - Nature Communications

SN - 2041-1723

IS - 1

M1 - 1144

ER -