Plant trait variation along environmental indicators to infer global change impacts

Fratte, Michele Dalle; Brusa, Guido; Pierce, Simon; Zanzottera, M.; Cerabolini, Bruno E. L.

doi:10.1016/j.flora.2018.12.004

Cited by 24 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Overall, patterns in mean trait values (CWM) mainly corresponded to general trait-environment relationships; for comprehensive global overviews, see [88][89][90][91]. Although some traits (e.g., LDMC) did not show significant patterns along the studied ecological gradients, the observed relationships are in agreement with the main axes of plant adaptation emphasized by the plant global spectrum [84]. For example, plant height is known to decrease with altitude.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

“…Trait-based approaches are useful for inferring the underlying mechanisms responsible for shaping understory plant assemblages. Disentangling the relative importance of the different processes involved in community assembly (e.g., abiotic filtering, limiting similarity, dispersal limitation) is not only interesting in itself but also crucial for understanding how communities will behave under future environmental scenarios, e.g., temporal changes in understory vegetation due to global environmental change or increasing impacts of disturbances [84,85].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Data on the Ellenberg Indicator Values (EIVs; [80]) were incorporated to estimate the mean environmental conditions in each plot. Bioindication with EIVs has been widely used by vegetation scholars to indicate species preferences in their realized niche, which may characterize the environmental conditions in the absence of directly measured parameters [81][82][83][84][85]. We calculated a presence/absence based mean community EIVs from all vegetation, including the tree, shrub and herb layer.…”

Section: Data Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Patterns of Understory Community Assembly and Plant Trait-Environment Relationships in Temperate SE European Forests

Kermavnar

Kutnar

2020

Diversity

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We analyzed variation in the functional composition and diversity of understory plant communities across different forest vegetation types in Slovenia. The study area comprises 10 representative forest sites covering broad gradients of environmental conditions (altitude, geology, light availability, soil type and reaction, nutrient availability, soil moisture), stand structural features and community attributes. The mean and variation of the trait values were quantified by community-weighted means and functional dispersion for four key plant functional traits: plant height, seed mass, specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content. At each study site, forest vegetation was surveyed at two different spatial scales (4 and 100 m 2 ) in order to infer scale-dependent assembly rules. Patterns of community assembly were tested with a null model approach. We found that both trait means and diversity values responded to conspicuous gradients in environmental conditions and species composition across the studied forests. Our results mainly support the idea of abiotic filtering: more stressful environmental conditions (e.g., high altitude, low soil pH and low nutrient content) were occupied by communities of low functional diversity (trait convergence), which suggests a selective effect for species with traits adapted to such harsh conditions. However, trait convergence was also detected in some more resource-rich forest sites (e.g., low altitude, high soil productivity), most likely due to the presence of competitive understory species with high abundance domination. This could, at least to some extent, indicate the filtering effect of competitive interactions. Overall, we observed weak and inconsistent patterns regarding the impact of spatial scale, suggesting that similar assembly mechanisms are operating at both investigated spatial scales. Our findings contribute to the baseline understanding of the role of both abiotic and biotic constraints in forest community assembly, as evidenced by the non-random patterns in the functional structure of distinct temperate forest understories.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Patterns of Understory Community Assembly and Plant Trait-Environment Relationships in Temperate SE European Forests

Kermavnar

Kutnar

2020

Diversity

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“…Further studies are necessary to implement our findings; in particular, we need to understand differences among distinct environments and habitats according to Grime's theory and the ecology of invasive plants (Rejmánek et al, 2005a;van Kleunen et al, 2018). Global changes and the flora globalization will promote the establishment of competitive alien functional types in Southern Europe (Walther et al, 2002;Ciappetta et al, 2016;Najberek et al, 2017;Dalle Fratte et al, 2018). In this context, CSR theory can be a viable tool for the risk assessment of IAS (Vicente et al, 2013), implementing the current approaches of prioritization methods and horizon scanning (Carboneras et al, 2018), and the development of non-invasive ideotypes of crops and horticultural plants (Anderson et al, 2006;van Kleunen et al, 2018a;Guo et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…characteristics of the resident communities favouring invasion . Specifically, according to trait-environment relationships (Dalle Fratte et al, 2018), differences between IAS and native plant species can reflect environmental conditions of the sites where they occur rather than differences between species per se (Leishman et al, 2010). Pyšek & Richardson (2008) reviewed the literature in an attempt to identify the traits characteristic of invasive vascular plant species, finding evidence only for some traits that are universally associated with these species: height, vigorous vegetative growth, early and extended flowering.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alien plant species invade by occupying similar functional spaces to native species

Fratte

Bolpagni

Brusa

et al. 2019

Flora

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Biological outliers: essential elements to understand the causes and consequences of reductions in maximum photochemical efficiency of PSII in plants

Julián,

Villadangos,

Jené

et al. 2024

Planta

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Main conclusion By studying Cistus albidus shrubs in their natural habitat, we show that biological outliers can help us to understand the causes and consequences of maximum photochemical efficiency decreases in plants, thus reinforcing the importance of integrating these often-neglected data into scientific practice. Abstract Outliers are individuals with exceptional traits that are often excluded of data analysis. However, this may result in very important mistakes not accurately capturing the true trajectory of the population, thereby limiting our understanding of a given biological process. Here, we studied the role of biological outliers in understanding the causes and consequences of maximum photochemical efficiency decreases in plants, using the semi-deciduous shrub C. albidus growing in a Mediterranean-type ecosystem. We assessed interindividual variability in winter, spring and summer maximum PSII photochemical efficiency in a population of C. albidus growing under Mediterranean conditions. A strong correlation was observed between maximum PSII photochemical efficiency (Fv/Fm ratio) and leaf water desiccation. While decreases in maximum PSII photochemical efficiency did not result in any damage at the organ level during winter, reductions in the Fv/Fm ratio were associated to leaf mortality during summer. However, all plants could recover after rainfalls, thus maximum PSII photochemical efficiency decreases did not result in an increased mortality at the organism level, despite extreme water deficit and temperatures exceeding 40ºC during the summer. We conclude that, once methodological outliers are excluded, not only biological outliers must not be excluded from data analysis, but focusing on them is crucial to understand the causes and consequences of maximum PSII photochemical efficiency decreases in plants.

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Plant trait variation along environmental indicators to infer global change impacts

Cited by 24 publications

References 54 publications

Patterns of Understory Community Assembly and Plant Trait-Environment Relationships in Temperate SE European Forests

Patterns of Understory Community Assembly and Plant Trait-Environment Relationships in Temperate SE European Forests

Alien plant species invade by occupying similar functional spaces to native species

Biological outliers: essential elements to understand the causes and consequences of reductions in maximum photochemical efficiency of PSII in plants

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