Species-richness and soil phosphorus in plant communities in coastal New South Wales

Species-richness (recorded as number of species in 16 m² quadrats), in more than 60 coastal sites developed over various substrata, exhibited a significant non-linear relationship with soil total phosphorus extracted from associated soil samples. Although the general form of this relationship is not incompatible with a resource competition model, the significant proportion of the total variance accounted for by the species-richness/phosphorus relationship suggests that a more detailed examination of phosphorus use at a community level will be profitable.