The plant traits that drive ecosystems: Evidence from three continents

作者：Sandra Dı́az, John Hodgson, Ken Thompson, Marcelo Cabido, Johannes H. C. Cornelissen, Adel Jalili, Gabriel Montserrat-Martı́, J. Philip Grime, Fatemeh Zarrinkamar, Younes Asri, S. R. Band, Sandra Basconcelo, Pilar Castro‐Díez, Guillermo Funes, Behnam Hamzeh’ee, M. Khoshnevi, Natalia Pérez Harguindeguy, Carmen Pérez‐Rontomé, A. Shirvany, Fernanda Vendramini, S. Yazdani, R. Abbas‐Azimi, Amy Bogaard, S. Boustani, M. Charles, M. Dehghan, L. de Torres‐Espuny, Valeria Falczuk, J. Guerrero‐Campo, A. Hynd, Glynis Jones, E. Kowsary, F. Kazemi‐Saeed, M. Maestro‐Martínez, A. Romo‐Díez, S. Shaw, Bita Siavash, Pedro Villar‐Salvador, Marcelo R. Zak · 发表于：Journal of Vegetation Science · 年份：2004 · DOI：10.1111/j.1654-1103.2004.tb02266.x · 被引用次数：1577 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change

Abstract Question: A set of easily‐measured (‘soft’) plant traits has been identified as potentially useful predictors of ecosystem functioning in previous studies. Here we aimed to discover whether the screening techniques remain operational in widely contrasted circumstances, to test for the existence of axes of variation in the particular sets of traits, and to test for their links with ‘harder’ traits of proven importance to ecosystem functioning. Location: central‐western Argentina, central England, northern upland Iran, and north‐eastern Spain. Recurrent patterns of ecological specialization: Through ordination of a matrix of 640 vascular plant taxa by 12 standardized traits, we detected similar patterns of specialization in the four floras. The first PCA axis was identified as an axis of resource capture, usage and release. PCA axis 2 appeared to be a size‐related axis. Individual PCA for each country showed that the same traits remained valuable as predictors of resource capture and utilization in all of them, despite their major differences in climate, biogeography and land‐use. The results were not significantly driven by particular taxa: the main traits determining PCA axis 1 were very similar in eudicotyledons and monocotyledons and Asteraceae, Fabaceae and Poaceae. Links between recurrent suites of ‘soft’ traits and ‘hard’ traits: The validity of PCA axis 1 as a key predictor of resource capture and utilization was tested by comparisons between this axis and valu...