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Updated: Jun 29, 2025

A Method for Quantifying Foliage-Dwelling Arthropods

A Method for Quantifying Foliage-Dwelling Arthropods

Published on: October 20, 2019

Biodiversity and productivity in eastern US forests.

Yunpeng Liu^1,2, J Aaron Hogan³, Jeremy W Lichstein³

¹Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes of Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|March 25, 2024

Summary

Species richness is a key predictor of forest productivity, outperforming functional and phylogenetic diversity metrics. Understanding biodiversity

Keywords:

biodiversity forests metrics productivity species richness

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Forestry
Biodiversity Science

Background:

Biodiversity is known to enhance ecosystem productivity, but the best metric for predicting this relationship at large scales is debated.
Key diversity metrics include species richness, functional trait diversity, and phylogenetic diversity.

Purpose of the Study:

To determine which diversity metric—species richness, functional trait diversity, or phylogenetic diversity—best predicts primary productivity in eastern US forests.
To investigate the interdependencies among these diversity metrics and their influence on ecosystem functioning.

Main Methods:

Utilized over 1.8 million tree measurements from eastern US forests.
Quantified relationships between functional trait diversity, phylogenetic diversity, species richness, and forest productivity.
Analyzed data across broad geographic extents, within ecoprovinces, and controlling for biomass and stand age.

Main Results:

Species richness was the most significant predictor of forest productivity, explaining variation not captured by functional or phylogenetic diversity.
Functional trait and phylogenetic diversity metrics, independent of species richness, showed a negative correlation with productivity.
These findings were consistent across various spatial scales and data subsets.

Conclusions:

Species richness is a valuable and effective metric for predicting forest productivity at broad geographic scales.
Processes like species sorting and packing are crucial for understanding biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships.
Further research is needed to clarify the complex linkages between functional diversity and ecosystem functioning, considering metric interdependencies.