Thursday, August 9, 2012: 8:40 AM
E141, Oregon Convention Center
Ryan A. Chisholm1, Helene Muller-Landau2, K. Abd. Rahman3, Daniel P. Bebber4, Yue Bin5, Stephanie Bohlman6, Norman A. Bourg7, Joshua Brinks8, Nicholas Brokaw9, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin10, Nathalie Butt11, Honglin Cao12, Min Cao13, Dairon Cárdenas14, Li-Wan Chang15, Jyh-Min Chiang16, George B. Chuyong17, Richard Condit18, H. S. Dattaraja19, Stuart J. Davies20, Alvaro Duque21, Christine Fletcher3, C.V. Savitri Gunatilleke22, I.A.U. Nimal Gunatilleke22, Zhanqing Hao23, Rhett Harrison24, Robert W. Howe25, Chang-Fu Hsieh26, Stephen P. Hubbell27, Akira Itoh28, David Kenfack29, Somboon Kiratiprayoon30, Andrew J. Larson31, Juyu Lian32, Dunmei Lin33, Haifeng Liu33, James A. Lutz34, Keping Ma35, Yadvinder Malhi36, Sean McMahon37, William J. McShea38, Madhava Meegaskumbura39, S. Mohd. Razman40, Michael Morecroft41, Christopher J. Nytch42, Alexandre Oliveiro43, Geoffrey G. Parker8, Sandeep Pulla19, Ruwan Punchi-Manage44, Hugo Romero45, Weiguo Sang46, Jon Schurman47, Su Sheng-Hsin48, Raman Sukumar19, I-Fang Sun49, H. S. Suresh19, Sylvester Tan50, Duncan Thomas51, Sean C. Thomas47, Jill Thompson52, Renato Valencia53, Alberto Vicentini54, Amy T. Wolf55, Sandra Yap56, Wanhui Ye32, Zuoqiang Yuan23 and Jess K. Zimmerman57, (1)Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, (2)Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Ancon, Panama, (3)Forest Research Institute Malaysia, SL 52109, Malaysia, (4)Earthwatch Institute, Oxford, United Kingdom, (5)South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, China, Guangzhou, China, (6)School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, (7)Conservation and Research Center, Smithsonian Institution - National Zoological Park, Front Royal, VA, (8)Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, (9)Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Studies University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, San Juan, PR, (10)Research Office, Department of National Parks, Bangkok, Thailand, (11)School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, (12)South China Botanical Garden, CAS, Guangzhou, China, (13)Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS, Kunming, China, (14)Herbario Amazónico Colombiano, Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas SINCHI, Bogotá D.C., Colombia, (15)Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, Taiwan, (16)Environmental and Plant Biology, Ohio University, Athens, OH, (17)Plant and Animal Sciences, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon, (18)The field museum, Chicago, IL, (19)Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, (20)Harvard University Arnold Arboretum, Center for Tropical Forest Science, Cambridge, MA, (21)Departamento de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia, (22)Department of Botany, University of Peradeniya, Faculty of Science, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, (23)Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China, (24)Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yunnan 666303, China, (25)Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, (26)Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, (27)Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, (28)Plant Ecology Lab, Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan, (29)Center for Tropical Forest Science & Smithsonian Global Earth Observatory, Washington, DC, (30)Department of Environmental Science, Thammasat University, Patumtani, Thailand, (31)College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, (32)South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Guangzhou, China, (33)Institute of Botany, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, (34)Department of Wildland Resources, and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, UT, (35)State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, (36)Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, (37)Quantitative Ecology Group, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Edgewater, MD, (38)Conservation Ecology Center, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute at the National Zoological Park, Front Royal, VA, (39)Dept. of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Peradeniya (20400), Sri Lanka, (40)Environmental Engineering Department, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Joho Baru, Malaysia, (41)School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom, (42)Environmental Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, San Juan, PR, (43)Dept. of Ecology, Bioscience Institute, São Paulo - SP, Brazil, (44)Dept. of Ecological Modelling, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig 04318, Germany, (45)Herbario QCA, Escuela de Ciencias Biologicas, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador (PUCE), Quito, Ecuador, (46)Beijing Forest Ecosystem Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China, (47)Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, (48)Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, (49)Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan, (50)Forest Department Sarawak, Kuching, Malaysia, (51)Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, (52)Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (Edinburgh), Midlothian, United Kingdom, (53)Laboratorio de Ecología de Plantas, Herbario QCA, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador, (54)Instituto Nacional de pesquisas Amazonicas, Manaus - AM, Brazil, (55)Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, (56)Institute of Biology, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City 1101 NCR, Philippines, (57)Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras, San Juan, PR
Background/Question/Methods The relationship between species richness and ecosystem function, as measured by productivity or biomass, has been the subject of decades of research and fervent debate. Several theoretical models predict a hump-shaped relationship, with peak richness occurring at intermediate levels of ecosystem function, while other models predict a positive relationship. Both the hump-shaped and positive relationship have been observed in empirical studies, but other patterns have been observed as well, suggesting that the underlying causal factors are complex, multivariate, system-dependent and scale-dependent. We compare within-site relationships between species richness and ecosystem function across a global network of 25 forest plots. We estimated species richness, biomass and productivity (the latter in 12 plots only) at three different spatial scales (0.04 ha, 0.25 ha and 1 ha) in each plot.
Results/Conclusions
At the 0.04-ha scale relationships between species richness, productivity and biomass were generally positive. At the 0.25-ha and 1-ha scales biomass-richness relationships exhibited no consistent pattern, and productivity-richness relationships were positive or flat. The results demonstrate that consistent relationships between species richness and ecosystem function are observed at some spatial scales. At scales where more variable results are obtained, future research should focus on identifying the environmental covariates that are driving between-site differences.
