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Quantifying and predicting variation in gross primary productivity (GPP) is important for accurate assessment of the ecosystem carbon budget under global change. Scaling traits to community scales for predicting ecosystem functions (i.e., GPP) remain challenging, while it is promising and well appreciated with the rapid development of trait-based ecology. In this study, we aim to integrate multiple plant traits with the recently developed trait-based productivity (TBP) theory, verify it via Bayesian structural equation modeling (SEM) and complementary independent effect analysis. We further distinguish the relative importance of different traits in explaining the variation in GPP. We apply the TBP theory based on plant community traits to a multi-trait dataset containing more than 13,000 measurements of approximately 2,500 species in Chinese forest and grassland systems. Remarkably, our SEM accurately predicts variation in annual and monthly GPP across China (R2 values of 0.87 and 0.73, respectively). Plant community traits play a key role. This study shows that integrating multiple plant functional traits into the TBP theory strengthens the quantification of ecosystem primary productivity variability and further advances understanding of the trait-productivity relationship. Our findings facilitate integration of the growing plant trait data into future ecological models. Integration of plant functional traits into trait-based productivity theory helps quantify primary productivity in terrestrial ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Global environmental changes are known to affect terrestrial ecosystems functions (i.e., plant growth and carbon storage). However, how plants and soil microorganisms respond to warming and nitrogen deposition in dry ecosystems with strong seasonal precipitation remains largely unexplored. Methods: Based on a 13-year manipulative field experiment, we investigated the effects of warming and nitrogen addition on soil microbial communities and plant net photosynthetic rates during dry and wet months in a desert steppe in Inner Mongolia. Results: We found that in the wet month, warming and nitrogen addition significantly increased soil microbial biomass. Yet, warming and nitrogen addition significantly increased soil inorganic nitrogen and leaf nitrogen concentration, thus promoting an increase in the net photosynthetic rate of Stipa breviflora. Moreover, warming and nitrogen addition significantly shifted soil microbial composition with an increase in soil bacterial phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) but a reduction in fungal PLFAs. The increased soil inorganic nitrogen indirectly enhanced leaf nitrogen and plant photosynthesis by changing soil microbial community structure. These changes were not significant in the dry month. Conclusions: Our study indicates that warming and nitrogen addition can promote plant photosynthesis by increasing soil nitrogen availability and changing soil microbial community structure. These changes only occurred when there was sufficient precipitation. These results highlight the crucial role of the soil microbial community and precipitation availability in influencing plant growth responses to global change drivers such as warming and nitrogen deposition. These findings suggest the importance of manipulating multiple factors rather than single factors in global change experiments and the role of plant and soil microbial interactions in ecosystem functions (i.e., plant growth and carbon storage) under global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Relationships of stomatal morphology to the environment across plant communities" published in Nature Communications. The correction addresses an error in one of the references cited in the original article. The correct reference is provided, and the correction has been made in both the PDF and HTML versions of the article. The authors of the original article are Congcong Liu, Lawren Sack, Ying Li, Jiahui Zhang, Kailiang Yu, Qiongyu Zhang, Nianpeng He, and Guirui Yu. [Extracted from the article]

The relationship between species richness and productivity has been a central issue in community ecology, and this issue has resulted in much debate in the ecological literature. To evaluate whether species richness is consistently associated with productivity and the underlying mechanisms, a potted experiment with various combinations of three perennial plant species ( Elymus nutans, Roegneria nutans and Festuca sinensis) was conducted under three fertilization levels over three years with interannual variation in rainfall in a subalpine meadow on the Tibetan plateau, China. The additive partitioning method was used for measuring net, selection and complementarity effects. The results suggest that species richness, composition and density had significant effects on aboveground biomass, but their effects were much less than abiotic factors (fertility and year). Relative yield total (RYT), net, selection and complementarity effects were not consistently positive or negative across years in the mixed communities. Both the interaction of year and species richness and the interaction of year and composition had significant effects on aboveground biomass, selection and complementarity effects. Fertilization and density had no significant effects on net, selection and complementarity effects. Our results indicate that plant richness is not consistently associated with productivity in these experimental plant communities, considering that selection and complementarity effects can vary with complex environmental conditions, and that these factors influence plant productivity. We suggest that different forms of relationships between species richness and productivity may be exhibited based on biotic or abiotic factors in plant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]