Global trait–environment relationships of plant communities

Helge Bruelheide (1) , Jurgen Dengler (2) , Oliver Purschke (3) , Jonathan Roger Michel Henri Lenoir (4) , Borja Jiménez-Alfaro (5) , Stephan Hennekens (6) , Zoltán Botta-Dukát , Milan Chytrý (7) , Richard Field , Florian Jansen , Jens Kattge (8) , Valério D. Pillar (9) , Franziska Schrodt , Miguel Mahecha , Robert Peet , Brody Sandel , Peter van Bodegom (10) , Jan Altman , Esteban Alvarez-Davila (11) , Mohammed Arfin Khan , Fabio Attorre , Isabelle Aubin , Christopher Baraloto (12) , Jorcely Barroso (13) , Marijn Bauters , Erwin Bergmeier , Idoia Biurrun , Anne Bjorkman , Benjamin Blonder (14) , Luis Cayuela (15) , J. Hans C. Cornelissen (16) , Dylan Craven , Matteo Dainese (17) , Géraldine Derroire (18) , Michele de Sanctis , Sandra Díaz , Jiří Doležal , William Farfan-Rios , Ted Feldpausch , Nicole Fenton , Eric Garnier (19) , Greg Guerin , Alvaro Gutiérrez , Sylvia Haider , Tarek Hattab (20) , Greg Henry , Bruno Hérault (12) , Pedro Higuchi , Norbert Hölzel (21) , Jürgen Homeier (22) , Anke Jentsch (23) , Norbert Jürgens , Zygmunt Kącki , Dirk Karger , Michael Kessler (24) , Michael Kleyer (25) , Ilona Knollová , Andrey Korolyuk , Ingolf Kuhn (26) , Daniel Laughlin , Frederic Lens (27) , Jacqueline Loos (28) , Frédérique Louault (29) , Mariyana Lyubenova , Yadvinder Malhi (30) , Corrado Marcenò , Maurizio S Mencuccini (31) , Jonas Müller , Jérôme Munzinger (32) , Isla Myers-Smith , David Neill (33) , Kate Orwin , Wim Ozinga (34) , Josep Peñuelas (35) , Aaron Pérez-Haase , Petr Petřík , Oliver Phillips , Meelis Pärtel (36) , Peter Reich (37) , Christine Romermann (38) , Arthur Rodrigues , Francesco Maria Sabatini , Jordi Sardans (39) , Marco Schmidt , Gunnar Seidler (40) , Javier Eduardo Silva Espejo , Marcos Silveira (13) , Anita Smyth , Maria Sporbert , Jens-Christian Svenning (41) , Zhiyao Tang , Raquel Thomas , Ioannis Tsiripidis (42) , Kiril Vassilev , Cyrille Violle (19) , Risto Virtanen (43) , Evan Weiher (44) , Erik Welk (40) , Karsten Wesche (45) , Marten Winter (46) , Christian Wirth (47) , Ute Jandt (48)

1 Institute of Biology/Geobotany and Botanical Garden
2 Universität Bayreuth
3 iDiv - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
4 EDYSAN - Ecologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés - UMR CNRS 7058
5 Department of Botany and Zoology
6 ALTERRA Wageningen
7 MUNI - Masaryk University [Brno]
8 MPI-BGC - Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
9 UFRN - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte [Natal]
10 Universiteit Leiden = Leiden University
11 Fundación Con-Vida
12 ECOFOG - Ecologie des forêts de Guyane
13 UFAC - Universidade Federal do Acre
14 EEB - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology [Tucson]
15 URJC - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos [Madrid]
16 VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [Amsterdam]
17 KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Department of Microelectronics and Information Technology, Kista Photonics Research Center (KPRC)
18 AgroParisTech
19 CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive
20 UMR MARBEC - MARine Biodiversity Exploitation and Conservation
21 WWU - Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster = University of Münster
22 Georg-August-University = Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
23 Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER)
24 UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich
25 Landscape Ecology Group
26 UFZ - Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung = Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
27 Naturalis Biodiversity Center [Leiden]
28 Institute of Ecology
29 UREP - Unité Mixte de Recherche sur l'Ecosystème Prairial - UMR
30 Environmental Change Institute
31 School of Geosciences [Edinburgh]
32 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
33 Universidad Estatal Amazonica
34 University of Nijmegen
35 CEAB - Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes
36 Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu
37 Department of Forest Resources
38 REGENSBURG - Universität Regensburg
39 CREAF - Centre de Recerca Ecològica i Aplicacions Forestals
40 MLU - Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg
41 Dept Biol Sci, Ecoinformat & Biodivers Grp
42 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
43 Dept Biol
44 University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
45 Department of Botany
46 Synthesis Centre for Biodiversity Sciences
47 Leipzig University / Universität Leipzig
48 Philips Research Europe - Hamburg, Sector Medical Imaging Systems

Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key question is to what extent community-level trait composition is globally filtered and how well it is related to global versus local environmental drivers. Here, we perform a global, plot-level analysis of trait–environment relationships, using a database with more than 1.1 million vegetation plots and 26,632 plant species with trait information. Although we found a strong filtering of 17 functional traits, similar climate and soil conditions support communities differing greatly in mean trait values. The two main community trait axes that capture half of the global trait variation (plant stature and resource acquisitiveness) reflect the trade-offs at the species level but are weakly associated with climate and soil conditions at the global scale. Similarly, within-plot trait variation does not vary systematically with macro-environment. Our results indicate that, at fine spatial grain, macro-environmental drivers are much less important for functional trait composition than has been assumed from floristic analyses restricted to co-occurrence in large grid cells. Instead, trait combinations seem to be predominantly filtered by local-scale factors such as disturbance, fine-scale soil conditions, niche partitioning and biotic interactions.

Mots clés: climat

Mots clés: diversité fonctionnelle; économie foliaire; température; prédiction

Domaines: Biodiversité; Ecologie, Environnement; Milieux et Changements globaux; Biodiversité et Ecologie

Helge Bruelheide, Jurgen Dengler, Oliver Purschke, Jonathan Roger Michel Henri Lenoir, Borja Jiménez-Alfaro, et al.. Global trait–environment relationships of plant communities. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2018, 2 (12), pp.1906-1917. ⟨10.1038/s41559-018-0699-8⟩. ⟨hal-02352596⟩