Community Assembly Rules, Morphological Dispersion, and the Coexistence of Plant Species

Weiher, Evan; Clarke, G; Keddy, Paul A.

doi:10.2307/3547051

Cited by 524 publications

(611 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…At harsh conditions (e.g. cold or dry), strong abiotic filtering is expected as few species are able to physiologically cope with, while niche differentiation is expected in more competitive and productive habitats according to the limiting similarity hypothesis (Weiher et al 1998;Cornwell et al 2006). In agreement with these expectations, Price et al (2014) found less niche overlap on specific leaf area within Estonian artificial grasslands under high fertility treatment.…”

Section: Which Assembly Process For Which Conditions?supporting

confidence: 77%

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Pontes

Maire

Schellberg

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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Grassland covers about one quarter of the Earth's land area and is currently estimated to contribute to the livelihoods of over 800 million people. Grassland provides ecosystem goods and services, mainly through the provisioning of milk and meat. Therefore, the proper use of grasslands will be essential for feeding the nine billion people that will inhabit planet Earth by 2050. In the context of a changing climate, we should better understand the interactions of environment, management and grass crop at individual, community and ecosystem levels. Functional ecology focuses on the roles and functions that species play in the community or ecosystem in which they occur. Functional ecology thus aims to understand how plant species adapt to environmental conditions and how management can alter this adaptation. Here, we review the latest advances in plant functional traits research and on species strategies to the main environmental factors occurring in grassland ecosystems: nutrient availability, grazing, cutting and shading. Functional ecology also provides a framework to better understand how species strategies interact with the species composition at the community level. Therefore, the literature on community assembling theories in relation to ecosystem processes most relevant to grassland management and services is also reviewed. Finally, future research questions and some new orientations for grassland experts are offered in order to meet the challenge of maintaining productivity and preservation of these semi-natural environments in the face of global change.

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Section: Which Assembly Process For Which Conditions?supporting

confidence: 77%

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Pontes

Maire

Schellberg

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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“…More on methods: ; Klimeš et al (1997); Van Groenendael et al (1997); Weiher et al (1998); Klimeš and Klimešová (2005).…”

Section: How To Collect and Classify?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Corrigendum to: New handbook for standardised measurement of plant functional traits worldwide

Pérez‐Harguindeguy¹,

Díaz²,

Garnier³

et al. 2016

Aust. J. Bot.

492

302

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The authors regret that elements of Appendix 1 were incorrect in the original publication. The correct version of Appendix 1 is given below. Appendix 1. Summary of plant traits Summary of plant traits included in the handbookThe range of values corresponds to those generally reported for field-grown plants. Ranges of values are based on the literature and the authors' datasets and do not always necessarily correspond to the widest ranges that exist in nature or are theoretically possible. Recommended sample size indicates the minimum and preferred number of individuals to be sampled, so as to obtain an appropriate indication of the values for the trait of interest; when only one value is given, it corresponds to the number of individuals ( = replicates); when two values are given, the first one corresponds to the number of individuals and the second one to the number of organs to be measured per individual. Note that one replicate can be compounded from several individuals (for smaller species), whereas one individual cannot be used for different replicates. The expected coefficient of variation (CV) range gives the 20th and the 80th percentile of the CV ( = s.d. scaled to the mean) as observed in several datasets obtained for a range of field plants for different biomes. Numbering of plant traits corresponds with the numbering of the chapters in the handbook Abstract. Plant functional traits are the features (morphological, physiological, phenological) that represent ecological strategies and determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels and influence ecosystem properties. Variation in plant functional traits, and trait syndromes, has proven useful for tackling many important ecological questions at a range of scales, giving rise to a demand for standardised ways to measure ecologically meaningful plant traits. This line of research has been among the most fruitful avenues for understanding ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes. It also has the potential both to build a predictive set of local, regional and global relationships between plants and environment and to quantify a wide range of natural and human-driven processes, including changes in biodiversity, the impacts of species invasions, alterations in biogeochemical processes and vegetation-atmosphere interactions. The importance of these topics dictates the urgent need for more and better data, and increases the value of standardised protocols for quantifying trait variation of different species, in particular for traits with power to predict plant-and ecosystemlevel processes, and for traits that can be measured relatively easily. Updated and expanded from the widely used previous version, this handbook retains the focus on clearly presented, widely applicable, step-by-step recipes, with a minimum of text on theory, and not only includes updated methods for the traits previously covered, but also introduces many new protocols for further traits. This new handbook has a better balance between whole-plant ...

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“…The first set of filters tends to cause overall similarity in the trait values of coexisting species because of common, requisite adaptations to physical conditions, while the second tends to cause trait overdispersion associated with limits to similarity and resource partitioning. Communities can be simultaneously constrained by both types of filters, so that traits associated with environmental filtering may be clustered, while traits associated with interactions may be overdispersed [20,21]. In addition, individual traits within assemblages can be constrained in their range and overdispersed within that range [22,23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances, challenges and a developing synthesis of ecological community assembly theory

Weiher

Freund

Bunton

et al. 2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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545

564

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Ecological approaches to community assembly have emphasized the interplay between neutral processes, niche-based environmental filtering and niche-based species sorting in an interactive milieu. Recently, progress has been made in terms of aligning our vocabulary with conceptual advances, assessing how trait-based community functional parameters differ from neutral expectation and assessing how traits vary along environmental gradients. Experiments have confirmed the influence of these processes on assembly and have addressed the role of dispersal in shaping local assemblages. Community phylogenetics has forged common ground between ecologists and biogeographers, but it is not a proxy for trait-based approaches. Community assembly theory is in need of a comparative synthesis that addresses how the relative importance of niche and neutral processes varies among taxa, along environmental gradients, and across scales. Towards that goal, we suggest a set of traits that probably confer increasing community neutrality and regionality and review the influences of stress, disturbance and scale on the importance of niche assembly. We advocate increasing the complexity of experiments in order to assess the relative importance of multiple processes. As an example, we provide evidence that dispersal, niche processes and trait interdependencies have about equal influence on trait-based assembly in an experimental grassland.

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Community Assembly Rules, Morphological Dispersion, and the Coexistence of Plant Species

Cited by 524 publications

References 69 publications

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Grass strategies and grassland community responses to environmental drivers: a review

Corrigendum to: New handbook for standardised measurement of plant functional traits worldwide

Advances, challenges and a developing synthesis of ecological community assembly theory

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