Putting seedlings on the map: Trade-offs in demographic rates between ontogenetic size classes in five tropical forests.

All species must partition resources among the processes that underly growth, survival, and reproduction. The resulting demographic trade-offs constrain the range of viable life-history strategies and are hypothesized to promote local coexistence. Tropical forests pose ideal systems to study demographic trade-offs as they have a high diversity of coexisting tree species whose life-history strategies tend to align along two orthogonal axes of variation: a growth-survival trade-off that separates species with fast growth from species with high survival and a stature-recruitment trade-off that separates species that achieve large stature from species with high recruitment.

Plant diversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality via multitrophic diversity.

Ecosystem functioning depends on biodiversity at multiple trophic levels, yet relationships between multitrophic diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality have been poorly explored, with studies often focusing on individual trophic levels and functions and on specific ecosystem types. Here, we show that plant diversity can affect ecosystem functioning both directly and by affecting other trophic levels. Using data on 13 trophic groups and 13 ecosystem functions from two large biodiversity experiments-one representing temperate grasslands and the other subtropical forests-we found that plant diversity increases multifunctionality through elevated multitrophic diversity.

Diversity-enhanced canopy space occupation and leaf functional diversity jointly promote overyielding in tropical tree communities.

Understanding the mechanisms that drive biodiversity-productivity relationships is critical for guiding forest restoration. Although complementarity among trees in the canopy space has been suggested as a key mechanism for greater productivity in mixed-species tree communities, empirical evidence remains limited. Here, we used data from a tropical tree diversity experiment to disentangle the effects of tree species richness and community functional characteristics (community-weighted mean and functional diversity of leaf traits) on canopy space filling, and how these effects are related to overyielding.