Species richness of limestone grasslands increases with trait overlap: Evidence from within- and between-species functional diversity partitioning

Journal of Ecology

Volumn 102, Issue 2, 2014, Pages 466-474

  Le Bagousse Pinguet, Yoann ^a   De Bello, Francesco ^a,b   Vandewalle, Marie ^c   Leps, Jan ^a   Sykes, Martin T ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH BOHEMIA   (Czech Republic)

^b INSTITUTE OF BOTANY   (Czech Republic)

^c LUND UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

Abiotic environment; Assembly rules; Determinants of plant community diversity and structure; Functional diversity; Single and multi trait approaches; Species richness; Trait overlap

Indexed keywords

EID: 84894236487     PISSN: 00220477     EISSN: 13652745     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12201     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Ackerly, D.D. (2004) Adaptation, niche conservatism, and convergence: comparative studies of leaf evolution in the California chaparral. American Naturalist, 163, 654-671.
2. Ackerly, D.D. & Cornwell, W.K. (2007) A trait-based approach to community assembly: partitioning of species trait values into within-and among-community components. Ecology Letters, 10, 135-145.
3. Ackerly, D.D., Dudley, S.A., Sultan, S.E., Schmitt, J., Coleman, J.S., Linder, C.R. et al. (2000) The evolution of plant ecophysiological traits: recent advances and future directions. BioScience, 50, 979-995.
4. Adler, P.B., HilleRisLambers, J. & Levine, J.M. (2007) A niche for neutrality. Ecology Letters, 10, 95-104.
5. Albert, C.H., Thuiller, W., Yoccoz, N.G., Douzet, R., Aubert, S. & Lavorel, S. (2010) A multi trait approach reveals the structure and the relative importance of intra- versus interspecific variability in plant traits. Functional Ecology, 24, 1192-1201.
6. Albert, C.H., Grassein, F., Schurr, F., Vieilledent, G. & Violle, C. (2011) When and how should intraspecific variability be considered in trait-based plant ecology? Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, 13, 217-225.
7. Auger, S. & Shipley, B. (2013) Inter-specific and intra-specific trait variation along a short environmental gradient in an old-growth temperate forest. Journal of Vegetation Science, 24, 419-428.
8. de Bello, F., Lavorel, S., Albert, C.H., Thuiller, W., Grigulis, K., Dolezal, J. et al. (2011) Quantifying the relevance of intraspecific trait variability for functional diversity. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2, 163-174.
9. de Bello, F., Vandewalle, M., Reitalu, T., Leps, J., Prentice, H.C., Lavorel, S. et al. (2013) Evidence for scale- disturbance-dependent trait assembly patterns in dry semi-natural grasslands. Journal of Ecology, 101, 1237-1244.
10. Bolnick, D.I., Amarasekare, P., Araujo, M.S., Bürger, R., Levine, J.M., Novak, M. et al. (2011) Why intraspecific trait variation matters in community ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 26, 183-192.
11. Booth, R.E. & Grime, J.P. (2003) Effects of genetic impoverishment on plant community diversity. Journal of Ecology, 91, 721-730.
12. Bradshaw, A.D. & Hardwick, K. (1989) Evolution and stress-genotypic and phenotypic components. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 37, 137-155.
13. Bray, R.H. & Kurtz, L.T. (1945) Determination of total, organic and available forms of phosphorus in soils. Soil Sciences, 59, 39-45.
14. Cadotte, M.W., Hamilton, M.A. & Murray, B.R. (2009) Phylogenetic relatedness and plant invader success across two spatial scales. Diversity and Distributions, 15, 481-488.
15. Chesson, P. (2000) Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 31, 343-366.
16. Clark, J. (2010) Individuals and the variation needed for high species diversity in forest trees. Science, 327, 1129-1132, 37.
17. Clark, J.S., Dietze, M., Chakraborty, S., Agarwal, P.K., Ibanez, I., LaDeau, S. et al. (2007) Resolving the biodiversity paradox. Ecology Letters, 10, 647-659.
18. Fajardo, A. & Piper, F.I. (2011) Intraspecific trait variation and covariation in a widespread tree species (Nothofagus pumilio) in Southern Chile. New Phytologist, 189, 259-271.
19. Fridley, J.D., Grime, J.P. & Bilton, M. (2007) Genetic identity of interspecific neighbours mediates plant responses to competition and environmental variation in a species-rich grassland. Journal of Ecology, 95, 908-915.
20. Fridley, J.D., Grime, J.P., Askew, A.P., Moser, B. & Stevens, C.J. (2011) Soil heterogeneity buffers community response to climate change in species-rich grassland. Global Change Biogeography, 17, 2002-2011.
21. Galloway, L.F. (1995) Response to natural environmental heterogeneity: maternal effect and selection on life-history characters and plasticities in Mimulus guttatus. Evolution, 49, 1095-1107.
22. Garcia-Berthou, E. (2001) On the misuse of residuals in ecology: testing regression residuals vs. the analysis of covariance. Journal of Animal Ecology, 70, 708-711.
23. Gotzenberger, L., de Bello, F., Brathen, K.A., Davison, J., Dubuis, A., Guisan, A. et al. (2012) Ecological assembly rules in plant communities - approaches, patterns and prospects. Biological Review, 87, 111-127.
24. Grime, J.P. (1973) Competitive exclusion in herbaceous vegetation. Nature, 242, 344-347.
25. Grime, J.P. (2006) Trait convergence and trait divergence in herbaceous plant communities: mechanisms and consequences. Journal of Vegetation Science, 17, 255-260.
26. Grubb, P.J. (1977) The maintenance of species richness in plant communities: the importance of the regeneration niche. Biological Review, 52, 107-145.
27. Hautier, Y., Niklaus, P.A. & Hector, A. (2009) Competition for light causes plant biodiversity loss after eutrophication. Science, 324, 636-638.
28. Hubbell, S.P. (2001) The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
29. Hulshof, C.M. & Swenson, N.G. (2010) Variation in leaf functional trait values within and across individuals and species: an example from a Costa Rican dry forest. Functional Ecology, 24, 217-223.
30. Hulshof, C., Violle, C., Spasojevic, M., McGill, B., Damschen, E., Harrison, S. et al. (2013) Intraspecific and interspecific variation in specific leaf area reveal the importance of abiotic and biotic drivers of species diversity and latitude. Journal of Vegetation Science, 24, 921-931.
31. Huston, M.A. (1979) A general hypothesis of species diversity. American Naturalist, 113, 81-101.
32. Hutchinson, G.E. (1957) Concluding Remarks. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 22, 415-427.
33. Jung, V., Violle, C., Mondy, C., Hoffmann, L. & Muller, S. (2010) Intraspecific variability and trait-based community assembly. Journal of Ecology, 98, 1134-1140.
34. Kattge, J., Díaz, S., Lavorel, S., Prentice, I.C., Leadley, P., Bönisch, G. et al. (2011) TRY-a global database of plant traits. Global Change Biology, 17, 2905-2935.
35. Kraft, N.J., Valencia, R. & Ackerly, D.D. (2008) Functional traits and niche-based tree community assembly in an Amazonian forest. Science, 322, 580.
36. MacArthur, R.H. & Wilson, O. (1967) The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
37. Maire, V., Gross, N., Da Silveira Pontes, L., Picon-Cochard, C. & Soussana, J.F. (2009) Trade-off between root nitrogen acquisition and shoot nitrogen utilization across 13 co-occurring pasture grass species. Functional Ecology, 23, 668-679.
38. Mason, N.W.H., de Bello, F., Doležal, J. & Lepš, J. (2011) Niche overlap reveals the effects of competition, disturbance and contrasting assembly processes in experimental grassland communities. Journal of Ecology, 99, 788-796.
39. Mayfield, M.M. & Levine, J.M. (2010) Opposing effects of competitive exclusion on the phylogenetic structure of communities. Ecology letters, 13, 1085-1093.
40. McGill, B.J., Enquist, B.J., Weiher, E. & Westoby, M. (2006) Rebuilding community ecology from functional traits. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 178-185.
41. McNaughton, S.J. (1983) Serengeti grassland ecology: the role of composite environmental factors and contingency in community organization. Ecological Monographs, 53, 291-320.
42. Messier, J., McGill, B.J. & Lechowicz, M.J. (2010) How do traits vary across ecological scales? A case for trait-based ecology. Ecology Letters, 13, 838-848.
43. Partel, M., Bruun, H.H. & Sammul, M. (2005) Biodiversity in temperate European grasslands: origin and conservation. Integrating Efficient Grassland Farming and Biodiversity, Grassland Science in Europe 10 (eds R. Lillak, R. Viiralt, A. Linke & V. Geherman ), pp. 1-14. Estonian Grassland Society, Tartu.
44. Pavoine, S. & Doledec, S. (2005) The apportionment of quadratic entropy: a useful alternative for partitioning diversity in ecological data. Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 12, 125-138.
45. Pérez-Harguindeguy, N., Díaz, S., Garnier, E., Lavorel, S., Poorter, H., Jaureguiberry, P. et al. (2013) New handbook for standardised measurement of plant functional traits worldwide. Australian Journal of Botany, 61, 167-234.
46. R Core Team (2012) R: A language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for statistical computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org/.
47. Rao, C.R. (2010) Quadratic entropy and analysis of diversity. Sankhya: The Indian Journal of Statistics, 72, 70-80.
48. Reitalu, T., Prentice, H.C., Sykes, M.T., Lönn, M., Johansson, L.J. & Hall, K. (2008) Plant species segregation on different spatial scales in semi-natural grasslands. Journal of Vegetation Science, 19, 407-416.
49. Reitalu, T., Sykes, M.T., Johansson, L.J., Lönn, M., Hall, K., Vandewalle, M. et al. (2009) Small-scale plant species richness and evenness in semi-natural grasslands respond differently to habitat fragmentation. Biological Conservation, 142, 899-908.
50. Sammul, M., Oksanen, L. & Mägi, M. (2006) Regional effects on competition - productivity relationship: a set of field experiments in two distant regions. Oikos, 112, 138-148.
51. Schamp, B.S., Chau, J. & Aarssen, L.W. (2008) Dispersion of traits related to competitive ability in an old-field plant community. Journal of Ecology, 96, 204-212.
52. Schlichting, C.D. (1986) The evolution of phenotypic plasticity in plants. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 17, 667-693.
53. Schlichting, C.D. (1989) Phenotypic integration and environmental change. BioScience, 39, 460-464.
54. Schlichting, C.D. & Levin, D.A. (1986) Phenotypic plasticity: an evolving plant character. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 29, 37-47.
55. Semchenko, M., Lepik, M., Götzenberg, L. & Zobel, K. (2012) Positive effect of shade on plant growth: amelioration of stress or active regulation of growth rate? Journal of Ecology, 100, 459-466.
56. Spasojevic, M.J. & Suding, K.N. (2012) Inferring community assembly mechanisms from functional diversity patterns: the importance of multiple assembly processes. Journal of Ecology, 3, 652-661.
57. Stubbs, W.J. & Wilson, J.B. (2004) Evidence for limiting similarity in a sand dune community. Journal of Ecology, 92, 557-567.
58. Suding, K.N., Lavorel, S., Chapin, F., Cornelissen, J., Díaz, S., Garnier, E. et al. (2008) Scaling environmental change through the community-level: a trait-based response-and-effect framework for plants. Global Change Biology, 14, 1125-1140.
59. Tilman, D. (1982) Resource Competition and Community Structure. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
60. Tilman, D. (1988) Plant Strategies and the Dynamics and Structure of Plant Communities. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
61. Valladares, F., Wright, S.J., Lasso, E., Kitajima, K. & Pearcy, R.W. (2000) Plastic phenotypic response to light of 16 congeneric shrubs from a Panamanian rainforest. Ecology, 81, 1925-1936.
62. Vellend, M. & Geber, M.A. (2005) Connections between species diversity and genetic diversity. Ecology Letters, 8, 767-781.
63. Violle, C. & Jiang, L. (2009) Towards a trait-based quantification of species niche. Journal of Plant Ecology, 2, 87-93.
64. Violle, C., Garnier, E., Lecoeur, J., Roumet, C., Podeur, C., Blanchard, A. et al. (2009) Competition, traits and resource depletion in plant communities. Oecologia, 160, 747-755.
65. Violle, C., Enquist, B.J., McGill, B.J., Jiang, L., Albert, C.H., Hulshof, C. et al. (2012) The return of variance: intraspecific variability in community ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 27, 244-252.
66. Warton, D.I., Wright, I.J., Falster, D.S. & Westoby, M. (2006) A review of bivariate line-fitting methods for allometry. Biological Reviews, 81, 259-291.
67. Weiher, E., Clarke, G.D.P. & Keddy, P.A. (1998) Community assembly rules, morphological dispersion, and the coexistence of plant species. Oikos, 81, 309-321.
68. Weiher, E., Freund, D., Bunton, T., Stefanski, A., Lee, T. & Bentivenga, S. (2011) Advances, challenges and a developing synthesis of ecological community assembly theory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366, 2403-2413.
69. Westoby, M., Falster, D.S., Moles, A.T., Vesk, P.A. & Wright, I.J. (2002) Plant ecological strategies: some leading dimensions of variation between species. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 33, 125-159.
70. Wright, I.J., Reich, P.B., Westoby, M., Ackerly, D.D., Baruch, Z., Bongers, F. et al. (2004) The worldwide leaf economics spectrum. Nature, 428, 821-827.