Global functional variation in alpine vegetation

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

  • Riccardo Testolin
  • Carlos Pérez Carmona
  • Fabio Attorre
  • Peter Borchardt
  • Helge Bruelheide
  • Jiri Dolezal
  • Manfred Finckh
  • Andreas Hemp
  • Ute Jandt
  • Andrei Yu Korolyuk
  • Jonathan Lenoir
  • Natalia Makunina
  • George P. Malanson
  • Ladislav Mucina
  • Jalil Noroozi
  • Arkadiusz Nowak
  • Robert K. Peet
  • Gwendolyn Peyre
  • Francesco Maria Sabatini
  • Jozef Šibík
  • Petr Sklenář
  • Kiril Vassilev
  • Risto Virtanen
  • Susan K. Wiser
  • Evgeny G. Zibzeev
  • Borja Jiménez-Alfaro
Questions: What are the functional trade-offs of vascular plant species in global alpine ecosystems? How is functional variation related to vegetation zones, cli-matic groups and biogeographic realms? What is the relative contribution of mac-roclimate and evolutionary history in shaping the functional variation of alpine plant communities?Location: Global.Methods: We compiled a data set of alpine vegetation with 5,532 geo- referenced plots, 1,933 species and six plant functional traits. We used principal component analysis to quantify functional trade-offs among species and trait probability den-sity to assess the functional dissimilarity of alpine vegetation in different vegetation zones, climatic groups and biogeographic realms. We used multiple regression on distance matrices to model community functional dissimilarity against environmental and phylogenetic dissimilarity, controlling for geographic distance.Results: The first two PCA axes explained 66% of the species’ functional variation and were related to the leaf and stem economic spectra, respectively. Trait prob-ability density was largely independent of vegetation zone and macroclimate but dif-fered across biogeographic realms. The same pattern emerged for both species pool and community levels. The effects of environmental and phylogenetic dissimilarities on community functional dissimilarity had similar magnitude, while the effect of geo-graphic distance was negligible.Conclusions: Plant species in alpine areas reflect the global variation of plant func-tion, but with a predominant role of resource use strategies. Current macroclimate exerts a limited effect on alpine vegetation, mostly acting at the community level in combination with evolutionary history. Global alpine vegetation is functionally unre-lated to the vegetation zones in which it is embedded, exhibiting strong functional convergence across regions.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummere13000
ZeitschriftJournal of Vegetation Science
Jahrgang32
Ausgabenummer2
Anzahl der Seiten15
ISSN1100-9233
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.03.2021
Extern publiziertJa

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Keith McDougall (Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Queanbeyan, NSW, Australia) for providing the vegetation data for the Australian Alps, Wolfgang Willner (Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria) for providing data for the Austrian Alps, and Miska Luoto (Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland) for sampling part of the vegetation data in the Scandinavian Mountains, along with all the other data collectors. We are also grateful to sPlot, the global vegetation‐plot database, which was funded by the German Research Foundation as one of the iDiv (DFG FZT 118, 202548816) research platforms. This study has been supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits ( http://www.try‐db.org ). The TRY initiative and database is hosted, developed and maintained by J. Kattge and G. Bönisch (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry). TRY is currently supported by DIVERSITAS/Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle–Jena–Leipzig. This work is part of the ALPVEG network ( www.alpveg.com/ ).

Funding Information:
GPM was funded by US National Science Foundation award 1853665. JD was funded by the MSMT Inter‐Excellence project (LTAUSA18007). LM was funded by the Iluka Chair in Vegetation Science and Biogeography at the Murdoch University. SKW was funded by the NZ Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment's Strategic Science Investment Fund. CPC was funded by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (PSG293). BJ‐A was funded by the Marie Curie Clarín‐COFUND programme of the Principality of Asturias‐EU (ACB17‐26) and the Spanish Research Agency (AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033)." sPlot was funded by the German Research Foundation as one of iDiv's (DFG FZT 118, 202548816) research platforms

Funding Information:
GPM was funded by US National Science Foundation award 1853665. JD was funded by the MSMT Inter-Excellence project (LTAUSA18007). LM was funded by the Iluka Chair in Vegetation Science and Biogeography at the Murdoch University. SKW was funded by the NZ Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment's Strategic Science Investment Fund. CPC was funded by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (PSG293). BJ-A was funded by the Marie Curie Clarín-COFUND programme of the Principality of Asturias-EU (ACB17-26) and the Spanish Research Agency (AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033)." sPlot was funded by the German Research Foundation as one of iDiv's (DFG FZT 118, 202548816) research platforms The authors would like to thank Keith McDougall (Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Queanbeyan, NSW, Australia) for providing the vegetation data for the Australian Alps, Wolfgang Willner (Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria) for providing data for the Austrian Alps, and Miska Luoto (Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland) for sampling part of the vegetation data in the Scandinavian Mountains, along with all the other data collectors. We are also grateful to sPlot, the global vegetation-plot database, which was funded by the German Research Foundation as one of the iDiv (DFG FZT 118, 202548816) research platforms. This study has been supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (http://www.try-db.org). The TRY initiative and database is hosted, developed and maintained by J. Kattge and G. Bönisch (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry). TRY is currently supported by DIVERSITAS/Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle–Jena–Leipzig. This work is part of the ALPVEG network (www.alpveg.com/).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 International Association for Vegetation Science

    Fachgebiete

  • Biologie - alpine biomes, alpine vegetation, evolutionary history, functional convergence, macroclimate, phylogenetic dissimilarity, trait pools, trait probability density

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