Biodiversity encompasses multiple attributes such as the richness and abundance of species (taxonomic diversity), the presence of different evolutionary lineages (phylogenetic diversity), and the variety of growth forms and resource use strategies (functional diversity). These biodiversity attributes do not necessarily relate to each other and may have contrasting effects on ecosystem functioning. However, how they simultaneously influence the provision of multiple ecosystem functions related to carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling (multifunctionality) remains unknown. We evaluated the effects of the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional attributes of dominant (mass ratio effects) and subordinate (richness effect) plant species on the multifunctionality of 123 drylands from six continents. Our results highlight the importance of the phylogenetic and functional attributes of subordinate species as key drivers of multifunctionality. In addition to a higher taxonomic richness, we found that simultaneously increasing the richness of early diverging lineages and the functional redundancy between species increased multifunctionality. In contrast, the richness of most recent evolutionary lineages and the functional and phylogenetic attributes of dominant plant species (mass ratio effects) were weakly correlated with multifunctionality. However, they were important drivers of individual nutrient cycles. By identifying which biodiversity attributes contribute the most to multifunctionality, our results can guide restoration efforts aiming to maximize either multifunctionality or particular nutrient cycles, a critical step to combat dryland desertification worldwide.
Plant-plant interactions are driven by environmental conditions, evolutionary relationships (ER) and the functional traits of the plants involved. However, studies addressing the relative importance of these drivers are rare, but crucial to improve our predictions of the effects of plantplant interactions on plant communities and of how they respond to differing environmental conditions. To analyze the relative importance of -and interrelationships among-these factors as drivers of plant-plant interactions, we analyzed perennial plant co-occurrence at 106 dryland plant communities established across rainfall gradients in nine countries. We used structural equation modeling to disentangle the relationships between environmental conditions (aridity and soil fertility), functional traits extracted from the literature, and ER, and to assess their relative importance as drivers of the 929 pairwise plant-plant co-occurrence levels measured. Functional traits, specifically facilitated plants' height and nurse growth form, were of primary importance, and modulated the effect of the environment and ER on plant-plant interactions. Environmental conditions and ER were important mainly for those interactions involving woody and graminoid nurses, respectively. The relative importance of different plant-plant interaction drivers (ER, functional traits, and the environment) varied depending on the region considered, illustrating the difficulty of predicting the outcome of plant-plant interactions at broader spatial scales. In our global-scale study on drylands, plant-plant interactions were more strongly related to functional traits of the species involved than to the environmental variables considered. Thus, moving to a trait-based facilitation/competition approach help to predict that: 1) positive plant-plant interactions are more likely to occur for taller facilitated species in drylands, and 2) plant-plant interactions within woody-dominated ecosystems might be more sensitive to changing environmental conditions than those within grasslands. By providing insights on which species are likely to better perform beneath a given neighbour, our results will also help to succeed in restoration practices involving the use of nurse plants. Soliveres et al.
Summary• A range of hypothesized evolutionary pathways has been proposed for describing the evolution of dioecy. However, the evolutionary links between other sexual systems not directly involved in dioecy evolution remain largely unexplored, and hence, a comprehensive picture of evolutionary transitions between sexual systems is still lacking.• Here, we explored the diversity and evolution of sexual systems in Asteraceae, the largest family of flowering plants, where almost all sexual systems are present. We used a phylogenetic approach to build a model of evolutionary transitions between sexual systems.• The best model involved nine transitions, including those from hermaphroditism to andromonoecy, gynomonoecy and gynodioecy, those from gynomonoecy to monoecy and trimonoecy, two transitions to dioecy -one through gynodioecy and the other through monoecy -and reversals from monoecy to gynomonoecy and from gynomonoecy to hermaphroditism.• Our reconstruction of the evolution of sexual systems in Asteraceae provided, for the first time, a joint view of the evolutionary transitions between seven sexual systems, unveiling the evolutionary links between monomorphic sexual systems. A pathway from hermaphroditism to monoecy through gynomonoecy, instead of from andromonoecy, was highly supported, which was consistent with a gradient of floral gender specialization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.