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Publications

Journal Article Ahead of print

PubMed: 42457981 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-026-03130-1

Biodiversity effects under climate extremes intensify with aridity in grasslands but not forests.

Nat Ecol Evol

Authors: Takehiro Sasaki, Daniela Hoss, Yuanyuan Huang, Yuki Iwachido, Liting Zheng, Luis Abdala-Roberts, Eric Allan, Harald Auge, Nadia Barsoum, Jürgen Bauhus, Christel Baum, Carl Beierkuhnlein, Friderike Beyer, Pedro Brancalion, Seraina L Cappelli, Chengjin Chu, Dylan Craven, Caroline Daniel, Jiri Dolezal, Anne Ebeling, Marina Fagundes, Olga Ferlian, Gislene Ganade, Tobias Gebauer, Benoit Gendreau-Berthiaume, Douglas Godbold, Nathaly Guerrero-Ramírez, Joannès Guillemot, Peter Hajek, Andy Hector, Dirk Hölscher, Hervé Jactel, Anke Jentsch, Julia Koricheva, Holger Kreft, Juergen Kreyling, Vojtech Lanta, Jan Leps, Wei Lin, Maybeth Mendoza-Espinosa, Celine Meredieu, Christian Messier, Sebastian T Meyer, Florencia Montagnini, Bart Muys, Charles Nock, Alain Paquette, William C Parker, John D Parker, Victor Parra-Tabla … and 27 other authors

Affiliations

  • Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan.
  • Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan.
  • German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
  • German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
  • Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany.
  • Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan.
  • Tokyo Metropolitan Research Institute for Environmental Protection, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores-Unidad Mérida, Ucú, Mexico.
  • Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
  • Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
  • Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
  • Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Halle, Germany.
  • Forest Research, Alice Holt Lodge, Farnham, UK.
  • Chair of Silviculture, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
  • Future Forests Cluster of Excellence, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
  • Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany.
  • Biogeography, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
  • Departamento de Botánica, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
  • Department for Spatial Structures and Digitization of Forests, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
  • Forest Science Department, University of São Paulo/ESALQ, Piracicaba, Brazil.
  • Center for Carbon Research on Tropical Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, Brazil.
  • re.green, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
  • WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Alpine Environment and Natural Hazards, Mountain Ecosystems, Davos, Switzerland.
  • State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China.
  • GEMA Center for Genomics, Ecology & Environment, Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile.
  • Data Observatory Foundation, Santiago, Chile.
  • Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, Pruhonice, Czech Republic.
  • Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic.
  • Institute of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.
  • Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil.
  • Geobotany, Faculty of Biology, and Future Forests Cluster of Excellence, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
  • geo-konzept Society of Environmental Planning Systems mbH, Adelschlag, Germany.
  • Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and en Outaouais (UQO), Quebec, Quebec, Canada.
  • Department of Forest Protection and Wildlife Management, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic.
  • Department of Ecosystem Management, Climate and Biodiversity, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria.
  • Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology & Biogeography, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
  • Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use (CBL), University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
  • CIRAD, UMR Eco&Sols, Montpellier, France.
  • CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, IRD, Eco&Sols, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
  • Department of Biology and Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
  • Tropical Silviculture and Forest Ecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
  • INRAE, University of Bordeaux, Biogeco, Cestas, France.
  • Disturbance Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics, Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
  • Department of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UK.
  • Campus Institute Data Science (CIDAS), University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
  • Experimental Plant Ecology, Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany.
  • Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Merida, Mexico.
  • Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
  • Yale School of the Environment, New Haven, CT, USA.
  • KU Leuven, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium.
  • Department of Renewable Resources, Faculty of Agriculture, Life, and Environmental Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
  • Centre for Forest Research, Département des sciences biologiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
  • Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada.
  • Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, USA.
  • Departamento de Ecologia Tropical, campus de Ciencias Biológicas y Agropecuarias, UADY, Merida, Mexico.

Abstract

Biodiversity generally enhances ecosystem productivity, but whether such effects persist or intensify during climate extremes is unclear. Here we synthesized data from 75 biodiversity experiments across grasslands and forests to assess how aridity and soil nutrients modulate plant diversity effects under drought and heat extremes. Biodiversity most strongly enhanced productivity under extreme drought in more arid grasslands but had limited effects in forests under such conditions. More arid grasslands showed enhanced complementarity effects under extreme drought, whereas less arid grasslands favoured selection effects driven by productive species. Heat extremes did not produce comparable context-dependent changes in plant diversity effects across ecosystem types or aridity gradients. Soil nutrients did not have any detectable influence under either drought or heat extremes, suggesting that as climatic stress intensifies, hydric limitations override edaphic constraints. Our synthesis identifies when and where plant diversity most strongly enhances productivity, showing that its effects are the greatest under extreme drought in more arid grasslands.

MeSH

Nutrients, Droughts, Climate, Ecosystem, Grassland, Biodiversity, Forests