The aim of this study was to discover how forest productivity is determined by tree species richness, climate and forest structure, i.e., tree size heterogeneity.
Forest ecosystem modifications perpetrated profound negative impacts on sustainable food production, freshwater availability, species diversity and richness, climate, and human well-being (Overmars and Verburg 2005 and Potter et al. 2007).
We do not discount the importance of other factors known to influence the relationship between heterogeneity and plant species richness, such as climate, geology, and natural disturbances (e.g., fire regime and hydrologic cycles) which were not evaluated in our study.
The degree to which the high species richness of Mediterranean-climate shrublands is maintained by competition-driven differentiation of functional traits [ 11, 20], or by lottery recruitment and disturbance-mediated coexistence [ 14, 52], is not fully clear.
Higher species richness in temperate climates is rather atypical and contrary to the usual pattern observed in plants where tropical groups generally tend to have more species than temperate relatives [ 6, 23].
Using this database, we explored patterns of orchid richness in relation to climate, net primary productivity and habitat heterogeneity in China.
For the hierarchical model, the strongest predictors of EPT richness included descriptors of climate, land-use and hydrology at the watershed scale, land-use at the valley scale, and substrate characteristics and riparian cover at the reach scale.
Fungal abundance and richness, when regressed against climate records from nearby weather stations, displayed a positive relationship with precipitation (abundance, r= 0.21, P < 0.05; richness, r= 0.14, n.s).s
This hypothesis is consistent with global-scale diversity trends and climate-richness relationships documented for plants and other groups of organisms (e.g., [107], [108]).
The north south typology of the arid climate affects the richness and the taxonomic and functional diversity of nematodes, while the west east temperature typology mainly affects the abundance of nematodes, especially of colonizing species.
A residual analysis in which the effect of elevation (a proxy for climate) on species richness and its potential determinants was removed confirmed the importance of the availability of trophic energy (NPP) for bird diversity patterns.
