The heterogeneity-biodiversity relationship across taxa and ecosystems

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Environmental heterogeneity is defined as the spatial and temporal change in resource or structure within a given area. The heterogeneity-diversity hypothesis is a classic of ecology, to the degree that it has become commonplace for conservationists to plead the positive relationship when emphasizing the importance of preserving or restoring different habitat types. However, recent theory and observation suggest that the relationship can be positive, flat, or even negative, depending on the ecological context. While plant and animal diversity intuitively depend on environmental heterogeneity at the landscape-scale, it is unclear whether the relationship generalizes the stand-scale. An alternative view is that the heterogeneity-diversity relationship vanishes and may even be reversed (diversity begets heterogeneity) at the stand-scale. Pioneer work as well as more recent studies have systematically considered one relationship direction; that heterogeneity begets diversity. The question of how plant diversity determines environmental heterogeneity at the stand-scale has, so far, been overlooked.