The biodiversity benefit of native forests and mixed-species plantations over monoculture plantations

Aim: China’s Grain for Green Program (GFGP) is the largest reforestation program in the world and has been operating since 1999. The GFGP has promoted the establishment of tree plantations over the restoration of diverse native forests. In a previous study, we showed that native forests support higher species richness and abundance of birds and bees than GFGP plantations and that mixed-species GFGP plantations support a higher level of bird diversity than other GFGP monocultures. Here, we use metabarcoding of arthropod diversity to test the generality of these results.
Location: Sichuan, China
Methods: We sampled arthropod communities using pan traps in the land-cover types concerned under the GFGP. These land-use types include croplands, native forests, and the dominant GFGP reforestation outcomes: monoculture and mixed-species plantations. We used COI-amplicon sequencing (‘metabarcoding’) of the arthropod samples to quantify and assess the arthropod community profiles associated wit...