Testing the ectomycorrhizal dominance hypothesis for ecosystem multifunctionality in a subtropical mountain forest

Mycorrhizal associations are key mutualisms that shape the structure of forest communities and multiple ecosystem functions. However, we lack a framework for predicting the varying dominance of distinct mycorrhizal associations in an integrated proxy of multifunctionality across ecosystems. Here, we used the datasets containing diversity of mycorrhizal associations and 18 ecosystem processes related to supporting, provisioning, and regulating services to examine how the dominance of EcM associations affects ecosystem multifunctionality in subtropical mountain forests in Southwest China. Meanwhile, we synthesized the prevalence of EcM dominant effects on ecosystem functioning in forest biomes. Our results demonstrated that elevation significantly modified the distributions of EcM trees and fungal dominance, which in turn influenced multiple functions simultaneously. Multifunctionality increased with increasing proportion of EcM associations, supporting the ectomycorrhizal-dominance hypot..., , , # Testing the ectomycorrhizal dominance hypothesis for ecosystem multifunctionality in a subtropical mountain forest

Ya-Huang Luo Liang-Liang Ma, Marc W. Cadotte, Sebastian Seibold, Jia-Yun Zou, Kevin S. Burgess, Shao-Lin Tan, Lin-Jiang Ye, Wei Zheng, Zhi-Fa Chen, De-Tuan Liu, Guang-Fu Zhu, Xiao-Chun Shi, Wei Zhao, Zheng Bi, Xiang-Yuan Huang, Jia-Hua Li, Jie Liu, De-Zhu Li, Lian-Ming Gao (2024) to be published in New Phytologist.

**A detailed description of the data file is given below.**

**MEF_ALL_DATA.xlsx**

plot ID: The identity of the plot

Elevation1: The true elevation for each plot

type: The plot belong to the eastern slope or western slope

Predictors (EcM dominance gradient)

EcM_trees: The relative proportion of EcM tress

EcM_fungi: The relative proportion of EcM fungi

18 Ecosystem functions (scaled data)

**Description of the variables and units**

AGB (Mg/ha ): Above-ground biomass for each plot
Tree leaf C/N: Tree leaf ratio of carbon to nitrogen
Tree leaf N/P: Tree...