Plant traits alone are poor predictors of ecosystem properties and long-term ecosystem functioning
Plant traits alone are poor predictors of ecosystem properties and long-term ecosystem functioning
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DOI：
10.1038/s41559-020-01316-9
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发表时间：
2020-10-05
影响因子：
16.8
通讯作者：
Wirth, Christian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
van der Plas, Fons;Schroeder-Georgi, Thomas;Wirth, Christian
通过对10年来40种植物性状和生态系统属性的分析，作者发现了适度的证据表明这些特征可以在几年内预测生态系统水平的属性，但有限的证据表明这些特征会在几年内产生任何影响。地球上有超过35万种维管植物物种，它们的特征在无数方面存在差异。一个关键的挑战是预测自然或人类驱动的共生植物物种的特性、丰度和多样性的变化如何驱动生物质生产或碳储存等重要的生态系统级特性。在这里，我们分析了在10年的时间里，通过78个试验性操纵草地的41个植物性状可以预测42种不同的生态系统属性的程度。尽管分析的性状数量空前，但共同解释的生态系统属性的平均变异百分比在个别年份内只是中等的(32.6%)，在不同年份之间甚至更低(12.7%)。大多数其他将生态系统特性与植物特性联系在一起的研究分析了不超过6个特性，当我们的分析中只包括6个特性时，以生态系统特性的跨年水平解释的平均变异百分比下降到4.8%。此外，我们发现，生态系统属性之间的显著预测因子平均只有12.2%的重叠，这表明不存在能够解释多种生态系统属性的一小部分关键特征。因此，我们的结果表明，特征本身可以预测生物多样性变化的长期功能后果的程度是有特定限制的，因此可能需要关于其他驱动因素的数据，例如相互作用的非生物因素，以改进对生态系统资产水平的预测。
Analysing >40 plant traits and ecosystem properties over 10 years, the authors find moderate evidence for traits being predictors of ecosystem-level properties within years, but limited evidence for any effect across years.Earth is home to over 350,000 vascular plant species that differ in their traits in innumerable ways. A key challenge is to predict how natural or anthropogenically driven changes in the identity, abundance and diversity of co-occurring plant species drive important ecosystem-level properties such as biomass production or carbon storage. Here, we analyse the extent to which 42 different ecosystem properties can be predicted by 41 plant traits in 78 experimentally manipulated grassland plots over 10 years. Despite the unprecedented number of traits analysed, the average percentage of variation in ecosystem properties jointly explained was only moderate (32.6%) within individual years, and even much lower (12.7%) across years. Most other studies linking ecosystem properties to plant traits analysed no more than six traits and, when including only six traits in our analysis, the average percentage of variation explained in across-year levels of ecosystem properties dropped to 4.8%. Furthermore, we found on average only 12.2% overlap in significant predictors among ecosystem properties, indicating that a small set of key traits able to explain multiple ecosystem properties does not exist. Our results therefore suggest that there are specific limits to the extent to which traits per se can predict the long-term functional consequences of biodiversity change, so that data on additional drivers, such as interacting abiotic factors, may be required to improve predictions of ecosystem property levels.