Plant Functional Types: Are We Getting Any Closer to the Holy Grail?

Lavorel, Sandra; Dı́az, Sandra; Cornelissen, Johannes H. C.; Garnier, Éric; Harrison, Sandy P.; McIntyre, Sue; Pausas, Juli G.; Pérez‐Harguindeguy, Natalia; Roumet, Catherine; Urcelay, Carlos

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-32730-1_13

Cited by 318 publications

(282 citation statements)

References 193 publications

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“…Adaptive responses of species to frequent defoliation may be similar to the responses to high nutrient availability (Lavorel et al 2007). Indeed, several authors have suggested that a high growth rate can be considered as a mechanism of tolerance to defoliation (McIntyre et al 1999;Westoby 1999;Díaz et al 2001).…”

Section: Grass Strategies To Tolerate or Compensate For Cutting/largementioning

confidence: 99%

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Pontes

Maire

Schellberg

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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Grassland covers about one quarter of the Earth's land area and is currently estimated to contribute to the livelihoods of over 800 million people. Grassland provides ecosystem goods and services, mainly through the provisioning of milk and meat. Therefore, the proper use of grasslands will be essential for feeding the nine billion people that will inhabit planet Earth by 2050. In the context of a changing climate, we should better understand the interactions of environment, management and grass crop at individual, community and ecosystem levels. Functional ecology focuses on the roles and functions that species play in the community or ecosystem in which they occur. Functional ecology thus aims to understand how plant species adapt to environmental conditions and how management can alter this adaptation. Here, we review the latest advances in plant functional traits research and on species strategies to the main environmental factors occurring in grassland ecosystems: nutrient availability, grazing, cutting and shading. Functional ecology also provides a framework to better understand how species strategies interact with the species composition at the community level. Therefore, the literature on community assembling theories in relation to ecosystem processes most relevant to grassland management and services is also reviewed. Finally, future research questions and some new orientations for grassland experts are offered in order to meet the challenge of maintaining productivity and preservation of these semi-natural environments in the face of global change.

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Section: Grass Strategies To Tolerate or Compensate For Cutting/largementioning

confidence: 99%

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Pontes

Maire

Schellberg

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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“…Much of our knowledge regarding the patterns of plant traits has derived from field observations along environmental gradients (see review in Lavorel et al 2007;Luo et al 2005), which are often associated with shifts in species composition. In the current study, after taking into account the taxonomic or phylogenetic differences among species within site (27% of the total variation, pure species effect in Fig.…”

Section: Shared Variation Among Sites and Among Species: Effect Of Spmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Understanding these adaptations is a priority for addressing such fundamental questions as how climate change will influence the world's ecosystems (Garnier et al 2007;Lavorel et al 2007). In natural grasslands, cold or dry climate (Walter 1970;Whittaker 1975) together with soil nutrient status (Hooper and Johnson 1999) determines biome boundaries, therefore we would expect leaf traits and trait combinations to vary among the native grassland taxa as temperature, aridity, and soil fertility vary, due to local adaptation to environmental conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In some cases, the impact of drought (Niinemets and Valladares 2006), grazing (see review by Díaz et al 2007), and land-use change (Garnier et al 2007) on plant traits have also been investigated. A recent study by collecting published studies has quantitatively assessed the relationships between leaf traits and soil nutrient fertility (Ordoñez et al 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous reviews of changes in species traits along soil fertility gradients documented that species from nutrient-rich habitats tend to be fast in resource capture and nutrient turnover, while the reverse is true for species from nutrient-poor habitats (Chapin 1980;Grime 1979). Corresponding to the differences in resource use, species from nutrient-rich habitats have been hypothesized to have a combination of low leaf mass per unit area (LMA), high tissue nutrient concentration [in particular leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P)], low tissue density, and short leaf lifespan, while species from nutrient-poor habitats have the opposite traits such that the mean residence time of nutrients tends to be maximized through long lifespan or high resorption efficiency of nutrients from senescing organs (Aerts and Chapin 2000; Lavorel et al 2007;Reich et al 1991;Westoby et al 2002). Moreover, examination of species variation within and among sites suggests that variation among species within a site is just as large as the mean differences among sites varying markedly in climate or soils (Wright et al 2005b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Taxonomic identity, phylogeny, climate and soil fertility as drivers of leaf traits across Chinese grassland biomes

Wang

Schmid

et al. 2010

J Plant Res

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Although broad-scale inter-specific patterns of leaf traits are influenced by climate, soil, and taxonomic identity, integrated assessments of these drivers remain rare. Here, we quantify these drivers in a field study of 171 plant species in 174 sites across Chinese grasslands, including the Tibetan Plateau, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang. General linear models were used to partition leaf trait variation. Of the total variation in leaf traits, on average 27% is due to taxonomic or phylogenetic differences among species within sites (pure species effect), 29%to variation among sites within species (pure site effect), 38% to joint effects of taxonomic and environmental factors (shared effect), and 6.2% to within-site and within-species variation. Examining the pure site effect, climate explained 7.8%, soil explained 7.4%, and climate and soil variables together accounted for 11%, leaving 18% of the inter-site variation due to factors other than climate or soil. The results do not support the hypothesis that soil fertility is the "missing link" to explain leaf trait variation unexplained by climatic factors.Climate-and soil-induced leaf adaptations occur mostly among species, and that leaf traits vary little within species in Chinese grassland plants, despite strongly varying climate and soil conditions.

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Modelling Plant Ecology

Fisher

2013

Environmental Modelling

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Plant Functional Types: Are We Getting Any Closer to the Holy Grail?

Cited by 318 publications

References 193 publications

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Taxonomic identity, phylogeny, climate and soil fertility as drivers of leaf traits across Chinese grassland biomes

Modelling Plant Ecology

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