Data from: Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity

There is now ample experimental evidence that speciose assemblages are
more productive and provide a greater amount of ecosystem services than
depauperate ones. However, these experiments often conclude that there is
a higher probability of including complementary species combinations in
assemblages with more species, and lack a priori prediction about which
species combinations maximize function. Here I report the results of the
first experiment that manipulates the evolutionary relatedness of
constituent plant species across a richness gradient. I show that
assemblages with distantly related species contributed most to the higher
biomass production in multispecies assemblages, through species
complementarity. Species produced more biomass than predicted from their
monocultures when they were in plots with distantly related species, and
produced the amount of biomass predicted from monoculture when sown with
close relatives. This suggests that, in the absence of any other
information, combining distantly related species in restored or managed
landscapes can serve to maximize biomass production and carbon
sequestration, thus merging calls to conserve evolutionary history and
maximize ecosystem function.