Publication details

Functional trait trade-offs define plant population stability across different biomes

Authors	CONTI Luisa VALENCIA Enrique GALLAND Thomas GOTZENBERGER Lars LEPS Jan E-VOJTKO Anna CARMONA Carlos P. MAJEKOVA Maria DANIHELKA Jiří DENGLER Juergen ELDRIDGE David J ESTIARTE Marc GARCIA-GONZALEZ Ricardo GARNIER Eric GOMEZ Daniel HADINCOVA Vera HARRISON Susan P. HERBEN Tomas IBANEZ Ricardo JENTSCH Anke JUERGENS Norbert KERTESZ Miklos KLUMPP Katja KRAHULEC Frantisek LOUAULT Frederique MARRS Rob H. ONODI Gabor PAKEMAN Robin J PARTEL Meelis PECO Begona PENUELAS Josep RUEDA Marta SCHMIDT Wolfgang SCHMIEDEL Ute SCHUETZ Martin SKALOVA Hana SMILAUER Petr SMILAUEROVA Marie SMIT Christian SONG MingHua STOCK Martin VAL James VANDVIK Vigdis WARD David WESCHE Karsten WISER Susan K WOODCOCK Ben A YOUNG Truman P YU Fei-Hai ZOBEL Martin DE BELLO Francesco
Year of publication	2023
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Science
Citation
Web	https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0344
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0344
Keywords	acquisitive; conservative; dispersal; long-term studies; temporal patterns; variability
Description	Ecological theory posits that temporal stability patterns in plant populations are associated with differences in species' ecological strategies. However, empirical evidence is lacking about which traits, or trade-offs, underlie species stability, especially across different biomes. We compiled a worldwide collection of long-term permanent vegetation records (greater than 7000 plots from 78 datasets) from a large range of habitats which we combined with existing trait databases. We tested whether the observed inter-annual variability in species abundance (coefficient of variation) was related to multiple individual traits. We found that populations with greater leaf dry matter content and seed mass were more stable over time. Despite the variability explained by these traits being low, their effect was consistent across different datasets. Other traits played a significant, albeit weaker, role in species stability, and the inclusion of multi-variate axes or phylogeny did not substantially modify nor improve predictions. These results provide empirical evidence and highlight the relevance of specific ecological trade-offs, i.e. in different resource-use and dispersal strategies, for plant populations stability across multiple biomes. Further research is, however, necessary to integrate and evaluate the role of other specific traits, often not available in databases, and intraspecific trait variability in modulating species stability.