Despite the accumulating evidence of the beneficial effects of diverse mixed species forests on ecosystem functioning and services, foresters in subtropical forest cultivation in China still prefer easily managed monocultures, which is also due to the complexity of mixed forests and the unknown underlying mechanisms related to relationships between biodiversity and forest growth. In a designed pot experiment, we selected two early-successional tree species (Pinus massoniana Lamb., Liquidambar formosana Hance.) and two late-successional tree spe...
