A Reframing of Trait–Demographic Rate Analyses for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Swenson, Nathan G.; Worthy, Samantha J.; Eubanks, Damani; Iida, Yoshihiro; Monks, Logan; Petprakob, Krittika; Rubio, Vanessa E.; Staiger, Kirstin; Zambrano, Jenny

doi:10.1086/706189

Cited by 46 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(101 reference statements)

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“…Such patterns would suggest that how selection acts on flowers may depend on ecological or phylogenetic contexts, which would be difficult to assess without a comparative approach. Synthetically bridging across scales by unifying studies of the effects of floral traits on demographic rates with comparative, interspecific studies (Swenson et al ., 2020) would be an important component of developing the FES.…”

Section: The Functional ‘Economics’ Of Flowersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards the flower economics spectrum

et al. 2020

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Understanding how floral traits affect reproduction is key for understanding genetic diversity, speciation, and trait evolution in the face of global changes and pollinator decline. However, there has not yet been a unified framework to characterize the major trade-offs and axes of floral trait variation. Here, we propose the development of a floral economics spectrum (FES) that incorporates the multiple pathways by which floral traits can be shaped by multiple agents of selection acting on multiple flower functions. For example, while pollinator-mediated selection has been considered the primary factor affecting flower evolution, selection by nonpollinator agents can reinforce or oppose pollinator selection, and, therefore, affect floral trait variation. In addition to pollinators, the FES should consider nonpollinator biotic agents and floral physiological costs, broadening the drivers of floral traits beyond pollinators. We discuss how coordinated evolution and trade-offs among floral traits and between floral and vegetative traits may influence the distribution of floral traits across biomes and lineages, thereby influencing organismal evolution and community assembly.

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Section: The Functional ‘Economics’ Of Flowersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards the flower economics spectrum

et al. 2020

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“…Importantly, we show the performance of a single trait value is dependent upon other trait values. Combined, the trait × trait and trait × environment interactions, the context dependencies of trait–performance relationships, and the ability of multiple trait combinations to give rise to similar performance outcomes indicate why single functional traits often fail to predict tree demographic rates (Poorter et al 2008; Paine et al 2015, Yang et al 2018, Swenson et al 2020) and how trait diversity can be maintained in ecological communities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The results also caution against focusing on single trait analyses in functional trait‐based community ecology and the aggregation of individual‐level trait variation to the species level. In particular, complex trait × trait and trait × environment interactions are realized at the individual level in communities and performance landscapes should be empirically quantified and conceptualized using individual‐level data (Liu et al 2016, Umaña et al 2018, Swenson et al 2020). Last, future research will be needed to uncover the mechanisms that allow multiple species in a community to occupy the same performance peaks in multidimensional phenotypic space and how above‐ and belowground resource levels interact to influence performance landscapes across systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, we currently lack clear empirical evidence that multiple phenotypic optima exist in a given environment and that these optima change across an environmental gradient. Ideally, such evidence would be gathered using individual‐level trait, demographic, and environmental information to account for the importance of intraspecific trait variation (Yang et al 2018, Swenson et al 2020). Here, we determined whether interactions between multiple functional traits and environmental gradients impacted tropical tree seedling growth rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Alternative designs and tropical tree seedling growth performance landscapes

Worthy

Laughlin

Zambrano

et al. 2020

Ecology

Self Cite

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The functional trait values that constitute a whole-plant phenotype interact with the environment to determine demographic rates. Current approaches often fail to explicitly consider trait 9 trait and trait 9 environment interactions, which may lead to missed information that is valuable for understanding and predicting the drivers of demographic rates and functional diversity. Here, we consider these interactions by modeling growth performance landscapes that span multidimensional trait spaces along environmental gradients. We utilize individual-level leaf, stem, and root trait data combined with growth data from tree seedlings along soil nutrient and light gradients in a hyper-diverse tropical rainforest. We find that multiple trait combinations in phenotypic space (i.e., alternative designs) lead to multiple growth performance peaks that shift along light and soil axes such that no single or set of interacting traits consistently results in peak growth performance. Evidence from these growth performance peaks also generally indicates frequent independence of above-and belowground resource acquisition strategies. These results help explain how functional diversity is maintained in ecological communities and question the practice of utilizing a single trait or environmental variable, in isolation, to predict the growth performance of individual trees.

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“…Understanding how the spatial structure of ITV differs between species may be critical for predicting variation between species in their demographic responses to environmental gradients (Swenson et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional traits predict species responses to environmental variation in a California grassland annual plant community

Kandlikar

Kleinhesselink

2020

Preprint

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Turnover in species composition and community-wide functional traits across environmental gradients is a ubiquitous pattern in ecology, and is generally assumed to reflect shifts in trait optima across these gradients. However, the demographic processes that give rise to these trait turnover patterns at the community level remain unclear.We asked whether shifts in the community-weighted means of three key functional traits across an environmental gradient in a southern California grassland reflect variation in the trait-performance relationship across the landscape.We planted seeds of 17 annual plant species in cleared patches with no competitors, and quantified the lifetime seed production of 1360 individuals. We then asked whether models that included trait-environment interactions help explain interspecific variation in demographic responses to the environment. This allowed us to evaluate whether observed shifts in community-weighted mean traits matched the direction of any trait-environment interactions detected in the plant performance experiment.Our results indicate that commonly-measured plant functional traits help explain variation in species responses to the environment – for example, high-SLA species had a demographic advantage in soils with high soil Ca:Mg levels, while low-SLA species had an advantage in low Ca:Mg soils. We also found that shifts in community-weighted mean traits often reflect the direction of these trait-environment interactions, though not all trait-environment relationships at the community level reflect interactive effects of traits and environment on species performance.Our results support the value of plant functional traits for predicting species responses to environmental variation, and highlight a need for more detailed evaluation of how trait-performance relationships change across environments to improve such predictions.

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A Reframing of Trait–Demographic Rate Analyses for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Cited by 46 publications

References 90 publications

Towards the flower economics spectrum

Towards the flower economics spectrum

Alternative designs and tropical tree seedling growth performance landscapes

Functional traits predict species responses to environmental variation in a California grassland annual plant community

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