Global trait–environment relationships of plant communities

Bruelheide, Helge; Dengler, Jürgen; Purschke, Oliver; Lenoir, Jonathan; Jíménez-Alfaro, Borja; Hennekens, S.M.; Botta‐Dukát, Zoltán; Chytrý, Milan; Field, Richard; Jansen, Florian; Kattge, Jens; Pillar, Valério D.; Schrodt, Franziska; Mahecha, Miguel D.; Peet, Robert K.; Sandel, Brody; Bodegom, Peter M. van; Altman, Jan; Álvarez-Dávila, Esteban; Khan, Mohammed Abu Sayed Arfin; Attorre, Fabio; Aubin, Isabelle; Baraloto, Christopher; Barroso, Jorcely; Bauters, Marijn; Bergmeier, Erwin; Biurrun, Idoia; Bjorkman, Anne D.; Blonder, Benjamin; Čarni, Andraž; Cayuela, Luis; Černý, Tomáš; Cornelissen, Johannes H. C.; Craven, Dylan; Dainese, Matteo; Derroire, Géraldine; Sanctis, Michele De; Dı́az, Sandra; Doležal, Jiří; Farfán-Ríos, William; Feldpausch, Ted R.; Fenton, Nicole J.; Garnier, Éric; Guerin, Greg R.; Gutiérrez, Álvaro G.; Haider, Sylvia; Hattab, Tarek; Henry, Greg H.R.; Hérault, Bruno; Higuchi, Pedro; Hölzel, Norbert; Homeier, Jürgen; Jentsch, Anke; Jürgens, Norbert; Kącki, Zygmunt; Karger, Dirk Nikolaus; Kessler, Michael; Kleyer, Michael; Knollová, Ilona; Korolyuk, Andrey Yu.; Kühn, Ingolf; Laughlin, Daniel C.; Lens, Frédéric; Loos, Jacqueline; Louault, Frédérique; Lyubenova, Mariyana; Malhi, Yadvinder; Marcenò, Corrado; Mencuccini, Maurizio; Müller, Jonas V.; Munzinger, Jérôme; Myers‐Smith, Isla H.; Neill, David; Niinemets, Ülo; Orwin, Kate H.; Ozinga, Wim A.; Peñuelas, Josep; Pérez‐Haase, Aaron; Petřík, Petr; Phillips, Oliver L.; Pärtel, Meelis; Reich, Peter B.; Römermann, Christine; Rodrigues, Arthur Vinícius; Sabatini, Francesco; Sardans, Jordi; Schmidt, Marco; Seidler, Gunnar; Silva-Espejo, Javier E.; Silveira, Marcos; Smyth, Anita K.; Sporbert, Maria; Svenning, Jens Christian; Tang, Zhiyao; Thomas, Raquel; Tsiripidis, Ioannis; Vassilev, Kiril; Violle, Cyrille; Virtanen, Risto; Weiher, Evan; Welk, Erik; Wesche, Karsten; Winter, Marten; Wirth, Christian; Jandt, Ute

doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0699-8

Cited by 446 publications

(477 citation statements)

References 53 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

449

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The results of our study also have implications for the use of community-weighted mean trait values in vegetation analyses (e.g., Bruelheide et al, 2018), as not only species abundances change in response to changing environmental conditions, but also values of traits considerably change. Other investigated traits did not show clear overall patterns, neither did the examined species.…”

Section: Con Clus Ionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands

Lang

Ahlborn

Munkhzul

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Functional traits are proxies for plant physiology and performance, which do not only differ between species but also within species. In this work, we hypothesized that (a) with increasing precipitation, the percentage of focal species which significantly respond to changes in grazing intensity increases, while under dry conditions, climate-induced stress is so high that plant species hardly respond to any changes in grazing intensity and that (b) the magnitude with which species change their trait values in response to grazing, reflected by coefficients of variation (CVs), increases with increasing precipitation. Chosen plant traits were canopy height, plant width, specific leaf area (SLA), chlorophyll fluorescence, performance index, stomatal pore area index (SPI), and individual aboveground biomass of 15 species along a precipitation gradient with different grazing intensities in Mongolian rangelands. We used linear models for each trait to assess whether the percentage of species that respond to grazing changes along the precipitation gradient. To test the second hypothesis, we assessed the magnitude of intraspecific trait variability (ITV) response to grazing, per species, trait, and precipitation level by calculating CVs across the different grazing intensities. ITV was most prominent for SLA and SPI under highest precipitation, confirming our first hypothesis. Accordingly, CVs of canopy height, SPI, and SLA increased with increasing precipitation, partly confirming our second hypothesis. CVs of the species over all traits increased with increasing precipitation only for three species. This study shows that it remains challenging to predict how plant performance will shift under changing environmental conditions based on their traits alone.In this context, the implications for the use of community-weighted mean trait values are discussed, as not only species abundances change in response to changing environmental conditions, but also values of traits considerably change. Including this aspect in further studies will improve our understanding of processes acting within and among communities. K E Y W O R D S environmental gradients, grasslands, intraspecific trait variability, land-use, rainfall, steppes S U PP O RTI N G I N FO R M ATI O N Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section. How to cite this article: Lang B, Ahlborn J, Oyunbileg M, et al. Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands. Ecol

show abstract

Section: Con Clus Ionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands

Lang

Ahlborn

Munkhzul

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, the land‐use variables alone showed a significant effect on SLA. These results highlighted the need to integrate at least soil features as local drivers of trait variation in functional biogeography studies aimed at exploring broad‐scale trait–environment relationships (Bruelheide et al., ). Moreover, our findings could be significant in the light of global changes: incorporating local‐scale soil parameters in modeling frameworks can significantly improve our ability to predict the functional responses of forest understorey (Simpson et al., , for trees).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Effects of climate, soil, forest structure and land use on the functional composition of the understorey in Italian forests

Chelli

Simonetti

Wellstein

et al. 2019

J Vegetation Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Question In functional biogeography studies, generalizable patterns in the relationship between plant traits and the environment have yet to emerge. Local drivers (i.e., soil, land use, vegetation structure) can increase our understanding of the trait–environment relationship. What is the role of climate and local drivers in shaping abundance‐weighted trait patterns of forest understories at biogeographic scales? Location Italian forests. Methods We selected 201 sites that are statistically representative for the heterogeneity of Italian forests across three biogeographic regions (alpine, continental, and mediterranean). Understorey vegetation was recorded for each site on an area of 400 m2, together with 25 environmental variables related to climate, soil, land use and forest structure. Specific leaf area (SLA), plant height (H) and seed mass (SM) were obtained from databases. Community‐weighted mean (CWM) values were calculated. Variance partitioning was used to identify the relative role of groups of environmental variables on the CWM of traits. Generalized Additive Models were used to assess the relationship between traits and single variables. Results Climate alone and climate–soil interactions explained the largest proportion of the variation of all the traits (13.7% to 22.8%). Temperature‐related factors as well as soil N and P availability were the climatic and edaphic explanatory variables most correlated to trait variation. Forest structure and land use accounted for a smaller percentage of the variation in traits. Land‐use factors alone were important in explaining only SLA variation. Conclusions While climate plays a major role in trait–environment relationships in forest understories, our results highlighted the need to integrate at least soil properties as local drivers of trait variation in broad scale functional biogeography studies of these systems.

show abstract

“…remote sensing; environmental DNA [eDNA]), (c) initiatives to harmonize (Garnier et al, ; Pérez‐Harguindeguy et al, ) and collate in situ species distribution and trait measurements in global databases (e.g. Bruelheide et al, ; Gillespie, ; Harris, Jones, Osborn, & Lister, ; Iversen et al, ; Kattge et al, ; Madin et al, ), (d) biogeography‐specific numerical techniques (e.g. Blonder, Lamanna, Violle, & Enquist, ; Ogle et al, ; Schrodt et al, ), (e) reproducible computer code (Cooper & Hsing, ) and (f) interoperable data guiding principles (Gries et al, ; Wilkinson et al, ).…”

Section: Asking Humboldtian Questions Todaymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another barrier to realizing Humboldt's vision of a global database of standardized measurements is that many existing databases for in situ organismal or environmental data cannot currently support submission of repeat surveys (e.g. TRY [plant traits; Kattge et al, ], sPlot [plant communities; Bruelheide et al, ], WoSIS [soils; Batjes et al, ]). Recent initiatives to promote analysis of change through time are helpful (e.g.…”

Section: Extensions Of Humboldtian Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and opportunities for biogeography—What can we still learn from von Humboldt?

Schrodt

Santos

Bailey

et al. 2019

Journal of Biogeography

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Alexander von Humboldt was arguably the most influential scientist of his day. Although his fame has since lessened relative to some of his contemporaries, we argue that his influence remains strong—mainly because his approach to science inspired others and was instrumental in furthering other scientific disciplines (such as evolution, through Darwin, and conservation science, through Muir)—and that he changed the way that large areas of science are done and communicated. Indeed, he has been called the father of a range of fields, including environmental science, earth system science, plant geography, ecology and conservation. His approach was characterized by making connections between non‐living and living nature (including humans), based on interdisciplinary thinking and informed by large amounts of data from systematic, accurate measurements in a geographical framework. Although his approach largely lacked an evolutionary perspective, he was fundamental to creating the circumstances for Darwin and Wallace to advance evolutionary science. He devoted considerable effort illustrating, communicating and popularizing science, centred on the excitement of pure science. In biogeography, his influence remains strong, including in relating climate to species distributions (e.g. biomes and latitudinal and elevational gradients) and in the use of remote sensing and species distribution modelling in macroecology. However, some key aspects of his approach have faded, particularly as science fragmented into specific disciplines and became more reductionist. We argue that asking questions in a more Humboldtian way is important for addressing current global challenges. This is well‐exemplified by researching links between geodiversity and biodiversity. Progress on this can be made by (a) systematic data collection to improve our knowledge of biodiversity and geodiversity around the world; (b) improving our understanding of the linkages between biodiversity and geodiversity; and (c) developing our understanding of the interactions of geological, biological, ecological, environmental and evolutionary processes in biogeography.

show abstract

Global trait–environment relationships of plant communities

Abstract: including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request.

Cited by 446 publications

References 53 publications

Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands

Grazing effects on intraspecific trait variability vary with changing precipitation patterns in Mongolian rangelands

Effects of climate, soil, forest structure and land use on the functional composition of the understorey in Italian forests

Challenges and opportunities for biogeography—What can we still learn from von Humboldt?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About