Recent studies assessing the role of biological diversity for ecosystem functioning indicate that the diversity of functional traits and the evolutionary history of species in a community, not the number of taxonomic units, ultimately drives the biodiversity–ecosystem‐function relationship. Here, we simultaneously assessed the importance of plant functional trait and phylogenetic diversity as predictors of major trophic groups...

We investigated effects of plant species richness in experimental grassland plots on annual above‐ and belowground biomass production estimated from repeated harvests and ingrowth cores, respectively. Aboveground and total biomass production increased with increasing plant species richness while belowground production remained constant. Root to shoot biomass production ratios (R/S) in mixtures were lower than expected from mon...

Increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentration and related climate change have stimulated much interest in the potential of soils to sequester carbon. In ‘The Jena Experiment’, a managed grassland experiment on a former agricultural field, we investigated the link between plant diversity and soil carbon storage. The biodiversity gradient ranged from one to 60 species belonging to four functional groups. Stratified soil samples were...