Traits Without Borders: Integrating Functional Diversity Across Scales

Carmona, Carlos P.; Bello, Francesco de; Mason, Norman W. H.; Lepš, Jan

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2016.02.003

Cited by 327 publications

(514 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…Thus, each axis can represent the quantity (e.g., proportion) of a chemical element in the body of an organism, which allows a hypervolumetric visualization and analysis of the niche and trait distribution at multiple scales (groups of individuals, entire communities or regional pools of species; see Villéger et al, 2008;Cucherousset and Villéger, 2015;Carmona et al, 2016). This elemental view of a living organism has been called the elemental phenotype, which could include the ∼25 elements composing the biomass of living organisms (Jeyasingh et al, 2014;Leal et al, 2017).…”

Section: The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These two patterns are: (1) the overlap that occurs when groups or organisms share a similar portion of the stoichiometric niche volume; and (2) the overlap that occurs when one group of organisms occupies a subset of the stoichiometric volume occupied by the other group (see Carmona et al, 2016). For instance, a low overlap and/or nestedness between two groups of organisms indicate that they differ in their elemental traits (i.e., high elemental complementarity).…”

Section: The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main premise of traitbased ecology is that the niche can be characterized by the phenotypic space occupied by a group of organisms. Quantification of this functional trait space has provided insights into understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that structure functional diversity, and the relationship between functional diversity and ecosystem processes (Carmona et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

et al. 2017

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The niche concept is essential to understanding how biotic and abiotic factors regulate the abundance and distribution of living entities, and how these organisms utilize, affect and compete for resources in the environment. However, it has been challenging to determine the number and types of important niche dimensions. By contrast, there is strong mechanistic theory and empirical evidence showing that the elemental composition of living organisms shapes ecological systems, from organismal physiology to food web structure. We propose an approach based on a multidimensional elemental view of the ecological niche. Visualizing the stoichiometric composition of individuals in multivariate space permits quantification of niche dimensions within and across species. This approach expands on previous elemental characterizations of plant niches, and adapts metrics of niche volume, overlap and nestedness previously used to quantify isotopic niches. We demonstrate the applicability of the multidimensional stoichiometric niche using data on carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus of terrestrial and freshwater communities composed by multiple trophic groups. First, we calculated the stoichiometric niche volumes occupied by terrestrial and freshwater food webs, by trophic groups, by individual species, and by individuals within species, which together give a measure of the extent of stoichiometric diversity within and across levels of organization. Then we evaluated complementarity between these stoichiometric niches, through metrics of overlap and nestedness. Our case study showed that vertebrates, invertebrates, and primary producers do not overlap in their stoichiometric niches, and that large areas of stoichiometric space are unoccupied by organisms. Within invertebrates, niche differences emerged between freshwater and terrestrial food webs, and between herbivores and non-herbivores (detritivores and predators). These niche differences were accompanied by changes in the covariance structure of the three elements, suggesting fundamental shifts in organismal physiology and/or structure. We also demonstrate the sensitivity of results to sample size, and suggest that representative sampling is better than rarefaction in characterizing the stoichiometric niche occupied by food webs. Overall, our approach demonstrates that stoichiometric traits provide a common currency to estimate the dimensionality of stoichiometric niches, and help reduce and rationalize the number of axis required to characterize communities.

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Section: The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

et al. 2017

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“…However, this is a relatively new metric which has yet to undergo the assessment stipulated by Table 3 and it is still unclear whether this metric satisfies other properties. In addition to the n-dimensional hypervolume, other recent developments include; Range box (Qiao et al 2017), Minimum ellipse (Swanson et al 2015), Dynamic range box (Junker et al 2016) and Probabilistic hypervolume (Carmona et al 2016). However, these metrics also have yet to undergo stringent tests to reveal whether they conform to important properties or have a link to ecosystem functioning.…”

Section: Structural Properties Of Metricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation and selection of functional diversity metrics with recommendations for their use in life cycle assessments

Ahmed

Bodegom

Tukker

2018

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose In life cycle assessments (LCAs), the focus of modelling the impact of human-induced pressures on biodiversity has been mainly on taxonomic diversity measures such as species richness. More recently, increasing availability of trait data and the understanding that functional diversity is more directly related to human-induced pressures suggests functional diversity as a promising metric. One major challenge relates to the selection process of the correct metric. Our purpose is to categorise and identify appropriate metrics of functional diversity for LCA model developers based on a justified choice of its structural properties and its links to human-induced pressures. Methods We conducted a meta-analysis of literature to identify those functional diversity metrics that are frequently applied (not necessarily within LCA studies) and that possess a strong link to ecosystem functioning and human-induced pressures. Also, we provide a compilation of metrics that conform to important and desirable structural properties stipulated from literature. By reconciling these highlighted key properties with the strength of metric link, we make propositions for functional diversity use in LCA. Results and discussion To capture impacts on functional diversity, the combination of functional richness, evenness and divergence needs to be considered. The mean strength of functional diversity metrics was highest for temperature rise and CO 2 elevation, as related to climate change, and less to eutrophication and land use change. Studies on impacts of water use change and other important human-induced pressures on functional diversity seem not available. When combined with desired structural properties such as independence and scale invariance, a combination of functional dendrogram (FR D ), functional evenness (FE m ) and functional logarithmic variance (FD var ) is preferred to comprehensively determine human impacts on biodiversity in LCAs. However, if a set of multi-dimensional components is sought, then the best option is functional volume (FR V ), functional evenness (FE m ) and functional divergence (FD m ). Conclusions Through this reconciliation of usage, mean strength and key properties, the LCA model developer is able to apply consistent and useful metrics in LCA studies.

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“…Functional diversity is a multifaceted concept that can be represented on a multidimensional space where the axes are functional traits (recently reviewed in Carmona, de Bello, Mason, & Leps, 2016). In such trait space , functional richness (Villéger, Mason, & Mouillot, 2008) represents the range occupied by a given community and can be estimated as the number of functional trait combinations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context‐dependent functional dispersion across similar ranges of trait space covered by intertidal rocky shore communities

Valdivia

Segovia-Rivera

Fica

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Functional diversity is intimately linked with community assembly processes, but its large‐scale patterns of variation are often not well understood. Here, we investigated the spatiotemporal changes in multiple trait dimensions (“trait space”) along vertical intertidal environmental stress gradients and across a landscape scale. We predicted that the range of the trait space covered by local assemblages (i.e., functional richness) and the dispersion in trait abundances (i.e., functional dispersion) should increase from high‐ to low‐intertidal elevations, due to the decreasing influence of environmental filtering. The abundance of macrobenthic algae and invertebrates was estimated at four rocky shores spanning ca. 200 km of the coast over a 36‐month period. Functional richness and dispersion were contrasted against matrix‐swap models to remove any confounding effect of species richness on functional diversity. Random‐slope models showed that functional richness and dispersion significantly increased from high‐ to low‐intertidal heights, demonstrating that under harsh environmental conditions, the assemblages comprised similar abundances of functionally similar species (i.e., trait convergence), while that under milder conditions, the assemblages encompassed differing abundances of functionally dissimilar species (i.e., trait divergence). According to the Akaike information criteria, the relationship between local environmental stress and functional richness was persistent across sites and sampling times, while functional dispersion varied significantly. Environmental filtering therefore has persistent effects on the range of trait space covered by these assemblages, but context‐dependent effects on the abundances of trait combinations within such range. Our results further suggest that natural and/or anthropogenic factors might have significant effects on the relative abundance of functional traits, despite that no trait addition or extinction is detected.

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Traits Without Borders: Integrating Functional Diversity Across Scales

Cited by 327 publications

References 95 publications

The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

Evaluation and selection of functional diversity metrics with recommendations for their use in life cycle assessments

Context‐dependent functional dispersion across similar ranges of trait space covered by intertidal rocky shore communities

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