Which is a better predictor of plant traits: temperature or precipitation?

作者：Angela T. Moles, Sarah E Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Shawn William Laffan, Habacuc Flores‐Moreno, Mohan Awasthy, Marianne L. Tindall, Lawren Sack, A. J. Pitman, Jens Kattge, Lonnie W. Aarssen, Madhur Anand, Michael Bahn, Benjamin Wong Blonder, Jeannine M. Cavender-Bares, Johannes Hans C. Cornelissen, William K. Cornwell, Sandra M. Díaz, John Dickie, Grégoire T. Freschet, Joshua G. Griffiths, Álvaro G. Gutiérrez, Frank A. Hemmings, Thomas Hickler, Timothy D. Hitchcock, Matthew Keighery, Michael Kleyer, Hiroko Kurokawa, Michelle R. Leishman, Kenwin Liu, Ülo Niinemets, В. Г. Онипченко, Yusuke Onoda, Josep Peñuelas, Valério D. Pillar, Peter B. Reich, Satomi Shiodera, Andrew Siefert, Ênio Sosinski, Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia, Emily K. Swaine, Nathan G. Swenson, Peter M. van Bodegom, Laura Warman, Evan Weiher, Ian J. Wright, Hongxiang Zhang, Martin Zobel, Stephen Patrick Bonser · 发表于：Journal of Vegetation Science · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.1111/jvs.12190 · 被引用次数：491 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Species Distribution and Climate Change

Abstract Question Are plant traits more closely correlated with mean annual temperature, or with mean annual precipitation? Location Global. Methods We quantified the strength of the relationships between temperature and precipitation and 21 plant traits from 447,961 species‐site combinations worldwide. We used meta‐analysis to provide an overall answer to our question. Results Mean annual temperature was significantly more strongly correlated with plant traits than was mean annual precipitation. Conclusions Our study provides support for some of the assumptions of classical vegetation theory, and points to many interesting directions for future research. The relatively low R 2 values for precipitation might reflect the weak link between mean annual precipitation and the availability of water to plants.