Global patterns and environmental drivers of forest functional composition
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Aim: To determine the relationships between the functional trait composition of forest communities and environmental gradients across scales and biomes and the role of species relative abundances in these relationships. Location: Global. Time period: Recent. Major taxa studied: Trees. Methods: We integrated species abundance records from worldwide forest inventories and associated functional traits (wood density, specific leaf area and seed mass) to obtain a data set of 99,953 to 149,285 plots (depending on the trait) spanning all forested continents. We computed community-weighted and unweighted means of trait values for each plot and related them to three broad environmental gradients and their interactions (energy availability, precipitation and soil properties) at two scales (global and biomes). Results: Our models explained up to 60% of the variance in trait distribution. At global scale, the energy gradient had the strongest influence on traits. However, within-biome models revealed different relationships among biomes. Notably, the functional composition of tropical forests was more influenced by precipitation and soil properties than energy availability, whereas temperate forests showed the opposite pattern. Depending on the trait studied, response to gradients was more variable and proportionally weaker in boreal forests. Community unweighted means were better predicted than weighted means for almost all models. Main conclusions: Worldwide, trees require a large amount of energy (following latitude) to produce dense wood and seeds, while leaves with large surface to weight ratios are concentrated in temperate forests. However, patterns of functional composition within-biome differ from global patterns due to biome specificities such as the presence of conifers or unique combinations of climatic and soil properties. We recommend assessing the sensitivity of tree functional traits to environmental changes in their geographic context. Furthermore, at a given site, the distribution of tree functional traits appears to be driven more by species presence than species abundance.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Global Ecology and Biogeography |
| Vol/bind | 33 |
| Udgave nummer | 2 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 303-324 |
| Antal sider | 22 |
| ISSN | 1466-822X |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
This work was funded in part by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant to Alain Paquette. This work was also made possible by the Global Forest Biodiversity Database ( https://www.gfbinitiative.org/ ), which represents the work of over 200 independent investigators and their public and private funding agencies (see Appendix S13 Supplementary acknowledgements). The study was supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits ( http://www.try‐db .org). The TRY database is hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI BGC, Germany) and supported by Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig. We are thankful to Orane Mordacq and Cameron Daoust for their help in cleaning and processing the data as well as collecting functional trait values from literature, and Charlotte Langlois, Marine Fernandez and Maxime Paquette for preparing the manuscript. We would like to thank François Rousseu, Daniel Schoenig, Daniel Lesieur and Mélanie Desrochers, CFR professionals in statistics, database management and GIS.
Funding Information:
This work was funded in part by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant to Alain Paquette. This work was also made possible by the Global Forest Biodiversity Database (https://www.gfbinitiative.org/), which represents the work of over 200 independent investigators and their public and private funding agencies (see Appendix S13 Supplementary acknowledgements). The study was supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (http://www.try-db.org). The TRY database is hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI BGC, Germany) and supported by Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. We are thankful to Orane Mordacq and Cameron Daoust for their help in cleaning and processing the data as well as collecting functional trait values from literature, and Charlotte Langlois, Marine Fernandez and Maxime Paquette for preparing the manuscript. We would like to thank François Rousseu, Daniel Schoenig, Daniel Lesieur and Mélanie Desrochers, CFR professionals in statistics, database management and GIS.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Global Ecology and Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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