Aims to improve our understanding of the elusive underlying patterns of the dynamics of African tropical forests: the presumed relationship between biodiversity and above ground carbon stock. In a first phase of the project, carbon stocks were calculated for different forest plots forming a production gradient and covering the different types of young regrowth and old growth forests found in the Man and Biosphere Reserve of Yangambi, DR Congo (Africa). Subsequently, we estimated the forest's biodiversity indices of following life forms: higher vascular plants, selected groups of fungi, lichens, myxomycetes, termites, spiders, flies, bees, birds, shrews and rodents and linked these to the above ground carbon stock measured in the various plots.