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Resurveyed Island Vegetation Reveals That Species Colonisation and Extinction Probabilities Are Linked to TraitsNARA Subscribed
The Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (ETIB) proposes that species richness on islands reflects a balance between extinctions and colonisations. However, ETIB assumes species neutrality, limiting predictions to species richness rather than types. Here, we integrate traits into equilibrium dynamics for 132 Australian islands' native floras sampled repeatedly over six decades. Our analysis shows that both species richnes...
Small coastal islands serve as replicated units of space that are useful for studying community assembly. Using a unique database holding information on comprehensive vegetation surveys on > 840 small coastal islands fringing the whole continent of Australia, we investigated the extent to which conditions will change for plants on Australia's islands over the next 80 years in terms of their temperature envelopes and inferred c...
Island Plant Species Distributions Contracted at the Cooler Edge Compared to MainlandNARA Subscribed
Continental islands have long been used as ecological models for understanding species assembly dynamics in isolated habitat fragments. But competition or colonisation constraints might be different to mainland populations, manifesting as expanded or contracted ranges across a geographic distribution of islands in comparison to a mainland population range. Here, we demonstrate that plants on coastal islands do not experience e...
Site‐Specific Nutrient Data Reveal the Importance of Soils in Driving the Mycorrhizal Make‐Up of Woody Vegetation WorldwideNARA Subscribed
Aim Arbuscular mycorrhizas (AM) and ectomycorrhizas (ECM) have different impacts on nutrient cycling, carbon storage, community dynamics and enhancement of photosynthesis by rising CO 2 . Recent global analyses have concluded that patterns of AM/ECM dominance in forests worldwide are shaped by climate, with soil nutrients contributing negligible additional explanatory power. However, their reliance on nutrient data from GIS su...
Trait filtering in island floras: A conceptual frameworkNARA Subscribed
Aim Dispersal and environmental filtering processes affect plant species colonisation success on islands and can be identified by functional traits. However, the lack of synthesis about the different methodological approaches in functional ecology hampers generalisation of filtering processes across island systems. Location Seventy islands of the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago, Western Australia. Major Taxa Studied Angiosperms....
Aim The Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (ETIB) posits that species richness on islands represents a dynamic equilibrium between immigration and extinction. ETIB makes predictions about numbers of species and biogeographical rates, but not about species identities or functional traits. However, functional traits provide additional information in understanding the assembly of island biotas. Here, we build on ETIB's pri...
Field experiments on mechanisms influencing species boundary movement under climate changeNARA Subscribed
Scope Currently knowledge is weak about which plant species boundaries are determined directly by climate and soil factors, versus which are mediated by biotic interactions, such as exclusion by superior competitors or by pathogens. Under moving climate zones the difference is important. For example, will warm boundaries shrink poleward of their own accord, or only following invasion by other species? What research will most e...
Disentangling direct and indirect effects of island area on plant functional trait distributionsNARA Subscribed
Aim Species diversity on islands generally increases with island area. This might arise either from direct effects of island area via neutral assembly processes or from indirect effects via habitat and structural differences between islands that scale positively with island area. Here, we tested whether community‐weighted functional trait means of woody plants are directly or indirectly affected by island area to elucidate how...
Bacteria and archaea have very different ecology compared to plants. One similarity, though, is that much discussion of their ecological strategies has invoked concepts such as oligotrophy or stress tolerance. For plants, so‐called ‘trait ecology’—strategy description reframed along measurable trait dimensions—has made global syntheses possible. Among widely measured trait dimensions for bacteria and archaea three main axes ar...
TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open accessNARA Subscribed
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodivers...
Setbacks to shoot growth are common in woody plants, so how are shoots of some species safer than others?NARA Subscribed
Tissue turnover is a critical facet of plant life history variation. This study quantifies losses from setbacks to growth of terminal woody shoots 1.2 m long, across 83 species and seven sites in eastern Australia. Setbacks, where the leading meristem had been removed or died and a new leader had emerged, were common (median three per shoot). Shoots had lost an average of 0.25 m of lead‐stem length for 1.2 m net shoot‐length g...
Plant species traits are the predominant control on litter decomposition rates within biomes worldwideNARA Subscribed
Worldwide decomposition rates depend both on climate and the legacy of plant functional traits as litter quality. To quantify the degree to which functional differentiation among species affects their litter decomposition rates, we brought together leaf trait and litter mass loss data for 818 species from 66 decomposition experiments on six continents. We show that: (i) the magnitude of species‐driven differences is much large...
Global patterns in seed sizeNARA Subscribed
Aim To provide the first global quantification of the slope and shape of the latitudinal gradient in seed mass, and to determine whether global patterns in seed mass are best explained by growth form, vegetation type, seed dispersal syndrome, or net primary productivity (NPP). Location Global. Methods We collected seed mass data for 11,481 species × site combinations from around the world. We used regression to describe the la...
Accessory costs of seed productionNARA Subscribed
Global patterns in seed sizeNARA Subscribed
Aim Our aim was to quantify climatic influences on key leaf traits and relationships at the global scale. This knowledge provides insight into how plants have adapted to different environmental pressures, and will lead to better calibration of future vegetation–climate models. Location The data set represents vegetation from 175 sites around the world. Methods For more than 2500 vascular plant species, we compiled data on leaf...
The mean size of seeds produced by plants at the equator is two to three orders of magnitude higher than the mean size of seeds produced by plants at 60°. We compiled data from the literature to assess the possibility that this latitudinal gradient in seed size allows species to cope with more difficult seedling establishment conditions in tropical environments. We found no relationship between latitude and seedling survival t...