Functional and phylogenetic diversity explain different components of diversity effects on biomass production

The Anthropocene is defined by human-driven environmental change, with one consequence being the modern dramatic decline in biodiversity globally. This is especially worrisome given the long-acknowledged causal linkage between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and the delivery of ecosystem services. However, the exact mechanisms driving biodiversity- ecosystem function (BEF) relationships remain unclear, specifically the linkages between species differences, measured by trait and phylogenetic distances, and how interactions, such as competitive inequality and stable coexistence via niche partitioning, influence these relationships. Using complementary plant biodiversity experiments, a synthetic-assembled one that combined species in different phylogenetic distance treatments with a semi- natural functional group removal experiment, we assessed how species differences influence the mechanisms underpinning BEF relationships. We calculated the net biodiversity effect (ΔY) of biomass p...