New studies from ForestGEO emphasize the importance of biodiversity

From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Forest biodiversity seen in ForestGEO’s Huai Kha Khaeng Forest Dynamics Plot, western Thailand. (photo by Christian Ziegler)

In the past few months, ForestGEO published three papers in major science journals, each discussing the importance of biodiversity and how it impacts forest community structure and relationships. The Hülsmann, et al. (2024) paper in Nature (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07118-4) shows how trees perform better when they are surrounded by varied (rather than the same) species, especially in tropical forests, which highlights how critical it is to maintain a diverse species population. The Kalyuzhny, et al. (2023) paper in Science (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adg7021) further supports this idea, describing how a tree is more likely to survive when surrounded by different species with different resource needs, diseases, and herbivores, leading to greater distances separating trees of the same species. This helps explain why tropical forests have such high diversity. Lastly, the Medina-Vega, et al. (2024) paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02298-0) dives deeper into functional diversity by exploring how the distribution and abundance of ectomycorrhizal-associated trees are independent of soil quality. The three papers demonstrate why biodiversity is essential for a healthy forest.