From plant traits to plant communities

这项建议涉及研究(I)不同植物性状在物种间比较时如何相互关联，(Ii)不同植物性状的价值如何决定它们在特定环境中如何能够很好地生存、生长和繁殖，(Iii)不同环境将如何选择不同的性状价值，以及(Iv)这一过程如何决定植物物种组成生态群落的过程。不同 植物种类，以及不同类型的植物，是不同类型的典型 栖息地。植物生态学的一个重要且未达到的目标是预测 哪些物种将成为优势物种，哪些物种将处于从属地位，哪些物种将成为 缺席，在不同的地点和环境(社区“集会”)。我开发了一个数学模型，旨在预测这一现象 以了解它是如何在不同的环境中作为特征选择的结果出现的。这 统计模型(“CATS”)将植物功能性状、环境 变量和区域物种库，以产生对 相对丰度。在未来5年内 我的团队将利用猫科动物的林下植物群落 魁北克南部的落叶树林，它们以岛屿的形式存在于农业“海”中 而且它们在大小、隔离程度和年龄方面都不同。在这个系统中，有三个主要力量 社区集会(分散限制、基于特征的选择和 人口随机性)应该特别强。我们还将测试一个假说，该假说旨在解释一种众所周知的、非常普遍的叶片性状之间协变模式的因果起源，即“全球叶片经济光谱”。这一假说将这种模式解释为维管植物叶片如何构造的“设计限制”的结果。最后，我和我的学生们将提炼和测试一个新的 一种重要的环境选择剂(土壤)的定量方法 肥力)是植物生态学中一种基本的环境选择剂。

This proposal concerns research into (i) how different plant traits are related to each other when comparing between species, (ii) how different values of plant traits determine how well they can survive, grow and reproduce in a given environment, (iii) how different environments will select for different trait values and (iv) how this process determines the assembly of plant species into ecological communities. Different plant species, and different types of plants, are typical of different habitats. An important, and unattained, goal of plant ecology is to predict which species will be dominant, which will be subordinate, and which will be absent, in different sites and environments (community “assembly”). I have developed a mathematical model designed to predict this phenomenon and to understand how it arises as a consequence of trait selection in different environments. This statistical model (“CATS”) links plant functional traits, environmental variables, and regional species pools to produce quantitative predictions of relative abundance. In the next 5 years my team will refine CATS using the understory plant communities of deciduous woods in southern Quebec, which exist as islands in an agricultural “sea” and that differ in terms of size, isolation and age. In this system the three main forces of community assembly (dispersal limitation, trait-based selection, and demographic stochasticity) should be especially strong. We will also test an hypothesis which purports to explain the causal origin of a well-known and very general pattern of covariation between leaf traits, the “worldwide leaf economic spectrum”. This hypothesis explains this pattern as a consequence of "design constraints" on how leaves of vascular plants are constructed. Finally, my students and I will refine and test a new method of quantifying one important environmental selection agent (soil fertility) which is a fundamental environmental selection agent in plant ecology.