Abstract
Pathogens and herbivores are key to diversity-productivity relationships. However, the extent to which plant diversity maintains higher productivity by reducing biomass loss from pathogens and herbivores remains unclear at the global scale. Based on a meta-analysis of 2315 observations from 316 studies, we show that, compared to monocultures, plant mixtures on average reduce pathogens abundance and damage to plants by 30.1% and 31.7% and those of invertebrate herbivores by 21.6% and 25.1%, while increasing plant productivity by 40.1% and 35.7%, respectively. Mixture effects on specialist pathogens and invertebrate herbivores become more negative with increasing plant taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity in mixtures, while those on generalist pathogens and invertebrate herbivores show no significant relationships with any diversity metrics. Mixture effects on pathogens decrease with stand age but those on invertebrate herbivores shift from negative to positive with stand age. Mixture effects on pathogens and invertebrate herbivores are negatively associated with those on productivity. Our findings highlight that conserving plant diversity could reduce biotic damage to plants and enhance global primary productivity.
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The raw data were obtained from previously published studies cited in Supplementary Data 1. The processed data are available at Figshare under accession code https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.2803257288. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The code used in this study is available at Figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.2803257288.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (32572024 to Z.M., 32301457 to W.C.), Shenzhen Science and Technology Program to Z.M. (JCYJ20230807111116034), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation to Z.M. (2023A1515010643) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Sun Yat-sen University to Z.M. (23lgbj009). We thank all the researchers whose data are used in this meta-analysis.
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C.H. and Z.M. conceptualized the study. C.H. contributed to data collection. C.H. and Z.M. conducted the data analysis and drafted the initial manuscript. H.C., W.C., and X.C. contributed to multiple rounds of revisions of the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version for publication.
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Huang, C., Chen, H.Y.H., Wenda, C. et al. Meta-analysis shows that plant mixtures reduce pathogens and invertebrate herbivores and increase plant productivity. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70609-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70609-7
