Figure captions

Fig. 1: Overview of the considered spatial processes of plant and animal interactions within a plant community. (A) Differences in plant space-use are captured by a gradient of spatial overlap in plant resource access (‘spatial resource overlap’), ranging from no overlap, where each plant is limited to its own patch, accessing only its local resource-pool and making exploitative competition impossible, to an even overlap with plants in neighbouring patches, maximizing exploitative competition. (B) We assume a home range size scaling with an animal’s body mass (left). To investigate its effect, we look at three scenarios of animal space-use (right), one of which serves as a null model for animal effects by excluding them entirely (‘none’). Scenarios with animals are either spatially non-nested, where animal populations are assumed to be well-mixed, or spatially nested, where animal home range sizes scale with their body mass. (C) When projecting them in space, each of the three scenarios can lead to different realized trophic interactions (right) despite a common meta-food web (left), illustrated using a simple trophic chain. Note that spatially nested food webs can also have similar interactions as spatially non-nested food webs depending on which species interact.
Fig. 2: Plant diversity-productivity relationships for the three food web scenarios considered, i.e. without food web (‘none’), with spatially nested food web (‘nested‘), and with spatially non-nested food web (‘non-nested’). Plant productivity is measured for the entire community. (A-E) Effects of increasing the spatial overlap in plant resource access (‘spatial resource overlap’). Points show 50th percentile (i.e. median); Error bars show 25th and 75th percentile. Unviable monocultures not included.
Fig. 3: Effects of increasing the spatial overlap in plant resource access (‘spatial resource overlap’) on plant community composition in plant communities assembled from 16-species and in three different food web scenarios, i.e. without food web (‘none’), with spatially nested food web (‘nested‘), and with spatially non-nested food web (‘non-nested’). Biodiversity is expressed in (A) realized species richness, (B) realized plant density, and (C) Shannon diversity. Points show 50th percentile (i.e. median); Error bars show 25th and 75th percentile.