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Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

Data from experiments that manipulated grassland biodiversity across Europe and North America show that biodiversity increases an ecosystem’s resistance to, although not resilience after, climate extremes.

Soil biodiversity is poorly studied compared to aboveground biodiversity, but is an important driver of ecosystem functioning. This Review discusses advances in research into the relationships between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, highlighting that integrative and causal study approaches will be needed to fill the gaps in our understanding.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

Species richness is often reported to enhance ecosystem functioning, but it is unclear whether similar diversity-functioning relationships occur at larger scales. Here Oehri et al. combine land cover survey and remote sensing data to show a positive relationship between landscape diversity and landscape functioning.

The field of molecular electronics is currently held back by the lack of scalability and reproducibility of existing break junction technologies. Here, Dubois et al. demonstrate parallel fabrication of millions of gold break junctions with sub-3 nm gaps via controllable crack formation on a wafer scale.

Physical complementarity among trees in the use of vertical space increases productivity due to species-specific differences and plasticity in crown architecture.

Biodiversity often increases the functioning and productivity of ecosystems or communities. This work shows that such a positive diversity effect, namely overyielding in mixtures of two divergent Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, can be genetically mapped and resolved to a single gene.

Integrating inventory data with machine learning models reveals the global composition of tree types—needle-leaved evergreen individuals dominate, followed by broadleaved evergreen and deciduous trees—and climate change risks.

Using information on current species distributions and dispersal traits, this study forecasts climate-driven range dynamics of plant species across the European Alps. Simulations predict moderate range contractions over the twenty-first century; however, more severe effects of climate warming on mountain plant diversity are expected in the longer term.

A major effect locus is identified that contributes to overyielding when two different accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana are grown together, suggesting a simple genetic basis for the positive effects of biodiversity on community functioning.

Rising CO₂ levels have been thought to potentially increase plant growth due to improved fertilization, but such a general effect is spatially and temporally affected by precipitation. Grassland experiments show constraints and increases in the fertilization effect due to seasonal-based precipitation, inferring that any potential plant growth could be mitigated by natural rainfall changes.

A biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiment in a young subtropical forest shows that, at high species richness, directed but not random species loss leads to pronounced productivity decrease.

The awareness of rock shape dependence in rockfall hazard assessment is growing, but experimental and field studies are scarce. This study presents a large data set of induced single block rockfall events quantifying the influence of rock shape and mass on its complex kinematic behaviour.

Biodiversity change can impact ecosystem functioning, though this is primarily studied at lower trophic levels. Here, Schuldt et al. find that biodiversity components other than tree species richness are particularly important, and higher trophic level diversity plays a role in multifunctionality.

Analysing >40 plant traits and ecosystem properties over 10 years, the authors find moderate evidence for traits being predictors of ecosystem-level properties within years, but limited evidence for any effect across years.

Landscape-level diversity – the number of different ecosystems in a 250 m by 250 m area – is positively related to landscape-wide primary production across North America, according to remote sensing observations and statistical analyses.

Land use explains ~60% of fish species richness from eDNA in a large river catchment in Thailand and modeling suggests that future land use may affect fish species richness overall but could threaten species of conservation interest.

Analysis of changes in plant species richness on mountain summits over the past 145 years suggests that increased climatic warming has led to an acceleration in species richness increase.

Maloca et al. implement convolutional neural network (CNN) to automatically segment OCT images obtained from cynomolgus monkeys. The results are compared to annotations generated by human graders. The ambiguity in ground truth had noteworthy impact on machine learning results, which could be visualized.

A spatially explicit global map of tree symbioses with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi reveals that climate variables are the primary drivers of the distribution of different types of symbiosis.

This Perspective reviews the practical and conceptual challenges inherent in the development of crop variety mixtures, and considers three domains in which they might be particularly beneficial: pathogen resistance, yield stability and yield enhancement.