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Recent studies have advanced our understanding regarding the niche complementarity and mass ratio effects on the ecosystem function, in both natural and experimental systems. However, biodiversity–ecosystem function (BEF) relationships may be fundamentally different across dense-wooded and light-wooded species, as they are clustered at two opposite extremes of the wood economics spectrum. Here we analyzed BEF relationships through mediations of functional dominance (i.e. community-weighted mean, CWM) and functional divergence (FDvar) of plant maximum height (H) while accounting for the effects of other characteristics of homegardens, across dense-wooded, light-wooded and all species, by using structural equation modelling (SEM) on 45 homegarden agroforestry systems in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The dense-wooded SEM accounted for 69% variation in aboveground biomass through …