Guerrero-Ramirez, N. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2023

Planting diversity begets multifaceted tree diversity in oil palm landscapes

Optimizing restoration outcomes is crucial for enhancing multifaceted diversity, resilience, and ecosystem functioning in monoculture-dominated landscapes globally. Here, we experimentally tested the performance of passive and active restoration strategies to recover taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity by establishing 52 tree islands in an oil palm landscape. Tree diversity via natural regeneration was shaped by local rather than landscape properties, with the diversity of planted tree species and tree island size driving higher multifaceted diversity. We show that large tree islands with higher initial planted diversity catalyze the recovery of multifaceted diversity at both the local and landscape level, including forest-associated species. Our results demonstrate that planted diversity begets regenerating diversity, overcoming major limitations of natural regeneration in highly modified landscapes. By elucidating the contribution of experimental, local, and landscape drivers to natural regeneration, these findings provide practical insights to make oil palm landscapes more biodiversity-friendly by enhancing functional and phylogenetic diversity within plantations.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

The fungal collaboration gradient dominates the root economics space in plants

Plant economics run on carbon and nutrients instead of money. Leaf strategies aboveground span an economic spectrum from live fast and die young to slow and steady, but the economy defined by root strategies belowground remains unclear. Here we take a holistic view of the belowground economy, and show that root-mycorrhizal collaboration can short circuit a one-dimensional economic spectrum, providing an entire space of economic possibilities. Root trait data from 1,781 species across the globe confirm a classical fast-slow conservation gradient but show that most variation is explained by an orthogonal collaboration gradient, ranging from do-it-yourself resource uptake to outsourcing of resource uptake to mycorrhizal fungi. This broadened root economics space provides a solid foundation for predictive understanding of belowground responses to changing environmental conditions. One Sentence SummaryCollaboration broadens the root economics space ranging from do-it-yourself resource acquisition to outsourcing to mycorrhizal partners.

ecology↗