Despite the importance of herbivory for the structure and functioning of species-rich forests, little is known about how herbivory is affected by tree species richness, and more specifically by random versus nonrandom species loss. We assessed herbivore damage in the early stage of a large-scale forest biodiversity experiment in subtropical China that features random and nonrandom extinction scenarios of tree mixtures numbering between one and 24 species. We hypothesize that (i) total herbivore damage increases along the gradient of tree species richness of our experimental sites. Moreover, we expect that (ii) these effects differ between the random and nonrandom extinction scenarios due to differences in the distribution of plant traits that may be particularly relevant to herbivores. Effects of tree species richness on herbivory at such an early stage of our experiment would have important implications for our understanding of how herbivores contribute to the processes that drive the assembly and functioning of establishing tree communities in species-rich forests. 2014-08-20 05:58:51 UTC final SP08e Diversity and functional effects of herbivores, predators and saproxylics in a phytodiverse subtropical forest ecosystem Andreas Schuldt andreas.schuldt@forst.uni-goettingen.de Goddert von Oheimb Goddert_v_Oheimb@tu-dresden.de Thorsten Assmann assmann@uni.leuphana.de Helge Bruelheide, Prof. helge.bruelheide@botanik.uni-halle.de Keping Ma, Prof. kpma@ibcas.ac.cn Ying Li, Dr. yingli8441@hotmail.com Werner Härdtle, Prof. werner.haerdtle@leuphana.de main false Matteo Brezzi matteo.brezzi@ieu.uzh.ch Bernhard Schmid, Prof. bernhard.schmid@ieu.uzh.ch https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/411/download https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/411/download.csv?separate_category_columns=true main false Goddert von Oheimb Goddert_v_Oheimb@tu-dresden.de Werner Härdtle, Prof. werner.haerdtle@leuphana.de Ying Li, Dr. yingli8441@hotmail.com https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/402/download https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/402/download.csv?separate_category_columns=true main false Goddert von Oheimb Goddert_v_Oheimb@tu-dresden.de Werner Härdtle, Prof. werner.haerdtle@leuphana.de Ying Li, Dr. yingli8441@hotmail.com https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/398/download https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/398/download.csv?separate_category_columns=true main false Goddert von Oheimb Goddert_v_Oheimb@tu-dresden.de Werner Härdtle, Prof. werner.haerdtle@leuphana.de Ying Li, Dr. yingli8441@hotmail.com https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/403/download https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/403/download.csv?separate_category_columns=true side false Karsten Schmidt Karsten.Schmidt@uni-tuebingen.de Helge Bruelheide, Prof. helge.bruelheide@botanik.uni-halle.de Gunnar Seidler gunnar.seidler@botanik.uni-halle.de Karin Nadrowski nadrowski@uni-leipzig.de https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/71/download https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/71/download.csv?separate_category_columns=true side false Karsten Schmidt Karsten.Schmidt@uni-tuebingen.de Helge Bruelheide, Prof. helge.bruelheide@botanik.uni-halle.de Karin Nadrowski nadrowski@uni-leipzig.de Gunnar Seidler gunnar.seidler@botanik.uni-halle.de https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/46/download https://data.botanik.uni-halle.de/bef-china/datasets/46/download.csv?separate_category_columns=true Journal of Ecology 103(3) · March 2015; doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12396 2015-03-20 accepted