Abstract
This article is a Commentary on https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16390.
Highlights
‘Assigning fungi into functional guilds [...] is definitely the way forward in understanding how soil-inhabiting communities affect plant community dynamics and functions.’
Plant species richness has been investigated as a response to productivity in herbaceous plant communities
It appears likely that neither one – plant richness nor productivity – influences the other by a simple direct path, but that their relationship is rather the result of a complex network of interactions on each variable with the aboveground and belowground abiotic and biotic environment. Another approach to qualify the richness–productivity relationship might be by disentangling indirect paths that act on either part in addition to the combination of richness and productivity
Summary
‘Assigning fungi into functional guilds [...] is definitely the way forward in understanding how soil-inhabiting communities affect plant community dynamics and functions.’. It appears likely that neither one – plant richness nor productivity – influences the other by a simple direct path, but that their relationship is rather the result of a complex network of interactions on each variable with the aboveground and belowground abiotic and biotic environment. Soil fertility is likely to be the stage on which soil fungi act on both plant species richness and productivity, shaping the observable status quo.
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