Positive relationships between tree species richness and productivity have been observed in both natural and experimental forests. Complementarity in resource capture and use has been put forward as one important mechanism for the positive richness-productivity relationship. However, inference that complementarity drives this relationship is often based on statistical modelling or the use of functional diversity indices and these methods do not consider resource capture or use among individuals from various species within a community. Here I introduce functional-structural plant models as tool to study species complementarity in light capture and use in mixed-species forests. These models consider the interplay between structure, physiology and the environment in 3D and scale from organ-specific characteristics to tree and community performance. Functional-structural plant models that represent mixed-species forests have therefore the potential to disentangle the effects of structural and functional differences among species on community light capture and use using the 3D setting of the forest. Knowing how community light capture and use in mixed-species forests depends on structural and functional differences among species will shed light on the potential of species complementarity in light capture and use to drive species richness-productivity relationships.

在天然林和实验林中都观察到树木物种丰富度与生产力之间的正相关关系。资源获取和利用中的互补性已被提出为积极的丰富性-生产力关系的重要机制。但是，推断互补性驱动这种关系的推论通常是基于统计模型或功能多样性指数的使用，而这些方法并未考虑资源的获取或在社区中来自不同物种的个体之间的使用。在这里，我介绍功能结构植物模型，作为研究光捕获和混合物种森林中的物种互补性的工具。这些模型考虑了3D中结构，生理学和环境之间的相互作用，并且从器官特定的特征到树木和群落表现的规模进行了缩放。因此，代表混合物种森林的功能结构植物模型有可能利用森林的3D设置来区分物种之间的结构和功能差异对社区光捕获和使用的影响。了解混合物种森林中社区光的捕获和利用如何取决于物种之间的结构和功能差异，将揭示光捕获和利用物种互补性驱动物种丰富度-生产力关系的潜力。