A prominent tree species coexistence mechanism suggests host-specific natural enemies inhibit seedling recruitment at high conspecific density (negative conspecific density dependence). Natural-enemy-mediated conspecific density dependence affects numerous tree populations, but its strength varies substantially among species. Understanding how conspecific density dependence varies with species’ traits and influences the dynamics of whole communities remains a challenge. Using a three-year manipulative community-scale experiment in a temperate forest, we show that plant-associated fungi, and to a lesser extent insect herbivores, reduce seedling recruitment and survival at high adult conspecific density. Plant-associated fungi are primarily responsible for reducing seedling recruitment near conspecific adults in ectomycorrhizal and shade-tolerant species. Insects, in contrast, primarily inhibit seedling recruitment of shade-intolerant species near conspecific adults. Our results suggest that natural enemies drive conspecific density dependence in this temperate forest and that which natural enemies are responsible depends on the mycorrhizal association and shade tolerance of tree species.

Long-term, daily, and gap-free Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is of great significance for a better Earth system observation. However, gaps and contamination are quite severe in current daily NDVI datasets. This study developed a daily 0.05° gap-free NDVI dataset from 1981–2023 in China by combining valid data identification and spatiotemporal sequence gap-filling techniques based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration daily NDVI dataset. The generated NDVI in more than 99.91% of the study area showed an absolute percent bias (|PB|) smaller than 1% compared with the original valid data, with an overall R² and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.79 and 0.05, respectively. PB and RMSE between our dataset and the MODIS daily gap-filled NDVI dataset (MCD19A3CMG) during 2000 to 2023 are 7.54% and 0.1, respectively. PB between our dataset and three monthly NDVI datasets (i.e., GIMMS3g, MODIS MOD13C2, and SPOT/PROBA) are only −5.79%, 4.82%, and 2.66%, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first long-term daily gap-free NDVI in China by far.