Biodiversity effects under climate extremes intensify with aridity in grasslands but not forests

Biodiversity generally enhances ecosystem productivity, but whether such effects persist or intensify during climate extremes is unclear. Here we synthesized data from 75 biodiversity experiments across grasslands and forests to assess how aridity and soil nutrients modulate plant diversity effects under drought and heat extremes. Biodiversity most strongly enhanced productivity under extreme drought in more arid grasslands but had limited effects in forests under such conditions. More arid grasslands showed enhanced complementarity effects under extreme drought, whereas less arid grasslands favoured selection effects driven by productive species. Heat extremes did not produce comparable context-dependent changes in plant diversity effects across ecosystem types or aridity gradients. Soil nutrients did not have any detectable influence under either drought or heat extremes, suggesting that as climatic stress intensifies, hydric limitations override edaphic constraints. Our synthesis identifies when and where plant diversity most strongly enhances productivity, showing that its effects are the greatest under extreme drought in more arid grasslands.