Biodiversity monitoring for Grain for Green Program

China's Grain for Green Program (GFGP) has promoted the establishment of monoculture plantations over the preservation of natural forest. In a previous study (Hua et al. 2016, Nat Comms 7:12717), we showed that GFGP monocultures supported considerably lower bird and bee species richness than do native forest and farmland. However, we also found that ‘mosaic’ GFGP forests, which are made up of two to five neighboring monoculture stands of different species, could support nearly the same bird (but not bee) species richness as do native forest and farmland. Here, we use metabarcoding to ask whether general arthropod biodiversity also shows higher levels of species richness in mosaic GFGP forests.