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

Species‐richness (recorded as number of species in 16 m 2 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.