Aridity-driven shift in biodiversity–soil multifunctionality relationships
Authors
Hu, Weigang; orcid: 0000-0003-1422-3726Ran, Jinzhi
Dong, Longwei
Du, Qiajun
Ji, Mingfei
Yao, Shuran
Sun, Yuan
Gong, Chunmei
Hou, Qingqing
Gong, Haiyang
Chen, Renfei
Lu, Jingli
Xie, Shubin
Wang, Zhiqiang
Huang, Heng; orcid: 0000-0001-5552-3333
Li, Xiaowei
Xiong, Junlan
Xia, Rui
Wei, Maohong
Zhao, Dongmin
Zhang, Yahui
Li, Jinhui
Yang, Huixia
Wang, Xiaoting
Deng, Yan
Sun, Ying
Li, Hailing
Zhang, Liang
Chu, Qipeng
Li, Xinwei
Aqeel, Muhammad
Manan, Abdul
Akram, Muhammad Adnan
Liu, Xianghan
Li, Rui
Li, Fan
Hou, Chen
Liu, Jianquan; orcid: 0000-0001-9337-9555
He, Jin-Sheng; orcid: 0000-0001-5081-3569
An, Lizhe
Bardgett, Richard D.; orcid: 0000-0002-5131-0127; email: richard.bardgett@manchester.ac.uk
Schmid, Bernhard; orcid: 0000-0002-8430-3214; email: bernhard.schmid@ieu.uzh.ch
Deng, Jianming; orcid: 0000-0002-5901-2175; email: dengjm@lzu.edu.cn
Publication Date
2021-09-09Submitted date
2021-01-07
Metadata
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Abstract: Relationships between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions (that is, ecosystem multifunctionality) are context-dependent. Both plant and soil microbial diversity have been reported to regulate ecosystem multifunctionality, but how their relative importance varies along environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Here, we relate plant and microbial diversity to soil multifunctionality across 130 dryland sites along a 4,000 km aridity gradient in northern China. Our results show a strong positive association between plant species richness and soil multifunctionality in less arid regions, whereas microbial diversity, in particular of fungi, is positively associated with multifunctionality in more arid regions. This shift in the relationships between plant or microbial diversity and soil multifunctionality occur at an aridity level of ∼0.8, the boundary between semiarid and arid climates, which is predicted to advance geographically ∼28% by the end of the current century. Our study highlights that biodiversity loss of plants and soil microorganisms may have especially strong consequences under low and high aridity conditions, respectively, which calls for climate-specific biodiversity conservation strategies to mitigate the effects of aridification.Citation
Nature Communications, volume 12, issue 1, page 5350Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UKType
articleDescription
From Springer Nature via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2021-01-07, accepted 2021-08-12, registration 2021-08-25, pub-electronic 2021-09-09, online 2021-09-09, collection 2021-12
Publication status: Published
Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China (National Science Foundation of China); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001809; Grant(s): 31770430