Aridity-driven shift in biodiversity–soil multifunctionality relationships

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25641-0
• Publication Date: 2021-09-09T10:05:22Z
• Authors: Weigang Hu; Jinzhi Ran; Longwei Dong; Qiajun Du; Mingfei Ji; Shuran Yao; Yuan Sun; Chunmei Gong; Qingqing Hou; Haiyang Gong; Renfei Chen; Jingli Lu; Shubin Xie; Zhiqiang Wang; Heng Huang; Xiaowei Li; Junlan Xiong; Rui Xia; Maohong Wei; Dongmin Zhao; Yahui Zhang; Jinhui Li; Huixia Yang; Xiaoting Wang; Yan Deng; Ying Sun; Hailing Li; Liang Zhang; Qipeng Chu; Xinwei Li; Muhammad Aqeel; Abdul Manan; Muhammad Adnan Akram; Xianghan Liu; Rui Li; Fan Li; Chen Hou; Jianquan Liu; Jin-Sheng He; Lizhe An; Richard D. Bardgett; Bernhard Schmid; Jianming Deng
• Keywords: Aridification; Aridity index

Relationships between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions (that is, multifunctionality) are context-dependent. Both plant soil microbial diversity have been reported to regulate multifunctionality, but how their relative importance varies along environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Here, we relate multifunctionality across 130 dryland sites a 4,000 km aridity gradient in northern China. Our results show strong positive association species richness less arid regions, whereas diversity, particular of fungi, is positively associated with more regions. This shift the relationships or occur at an level ∼0.8, boundary semiarid climates, which predicted advance geographically ∼28% by end current century. study highlights that loss plants microorganisms may especially consequences under low high conditions, respectively, calls for climate-specific conservation strategies mitigate effects aridification.