Plant functional trait response to environmental drivers across European temperate forest understorey communities
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
Authors
Functional traits respond to environmental drivers, hence evaluating trait-environment relationships across spatial environmental gradients can help to understand how multiple drivers influence plant communities. Global-change drivers such as changes in atmospheric nitrogen deposition occur worldwide, but affect community trait distributions at the local scale, where resources (e.g. light availability) and conditions (e.g. soil pH) also influence plant communities. We investigate how multiple environmental drivers affect community trait responses related to resource acquisition (plant height, specific leaf area (SLA), woodiness, and mycorrhizal status) and regeneration (seed mass, lateral spread) of European temperate deciduous forest understoreys. We sampled understorey communities and derived trait responses across spatial gradients of global-change drivers (temperature, precipitation, nitrogen deposition, and past land use), while integrating in-situ plot measurements on resources and conditions (soil type, Olsen phosphorus (P), Ellenberg soil moisture, light, litter mass, and litter quality). Among the global-change drivers, mean annual temperature strongly influenced traits related to resource acquisition. Higher temperatures were associated with taller understoreys producing leaves with lower SLA, and a higher proportional cover of woody and obligate mycorrhizal (OM) species. Communities in plots with higher Ellenberg soil moisture content had smaller seeds and lower proportional cover of woody and OM species. Finally, plots with thicker litter layers hosted taller understoreys with larger seeds and a higher proportional cover of OM species. Our findings suggest potential community shifts in temperate forest understoreys with global warming, and highlight the importance of local resources and conditions as well as global-change drivers for community trait variation.
| Originalsprache | Englisch |
|---|---|
| Zeitschrift | Plant Biology |
| Jahrgang | 22 |
| Ausgabenummer | 3 |
| Seiten (von - bis) | 410-424 |
| Anzahl der Seiten | 15 |
| ISSN | 1435-8603 |
| DOIs | |
| Publikationsstatus | Erschienen - 01.05.2020 |
Bibliographische Notiz
Funding Information:
We thank the European Research Council [ERC Consolidator grant no. 614839: PASTFORWARD] for funding SLM, HB, LD, KV, MV and MPP for scientific research and fieldwork involved in this study. Frantisek M was funded by APVV-15-0270 and VEGA 2/0031/17. RH was supported by the grant project 17-09283S from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, and RH and MK were supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences, project RVO 67985939. TV received funding from the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University (no. 01N02817). We thank Kris and Filip Ceunen, Robbe De Beelde, Jorgen Op de Beeck, Pieter De Frenne, Bram Bauwens, Wolfgang Schmidt and many others for their support during the intense fieldwork campaign across European forests. Thank you, Luc Willems, Greet De Bruyn and An De Schrijver for chemical expertise and performing the analyses. Thanks to J?r?me Buridant for going through numerous forest archives, and D?borah Closset-Kopp for help with the site selection. Thanks also to the Nature Conservation Agency of Latvia for granting us permission to work in the Moricsala Nature Reserve. Thank you to the two anonymous reviewers who also commented on our paper.
Funding Information:
We thank the European Research Council [ERC Consolidator grant no. 614839: PASTFORWARD] for funding SLM, HB, LD, KV, MV and MPP for scientific research and fieldwork involved in this study. Frantisek M was funded by APVV‐15‐0270 and VEGA 2/0031/17. RH was supported by the grant project 17‐09283S from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, and RH and MK were supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences, project RVO 67985939. TV received funding from the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University (no. 01N02817). We thank Kris and Filip Ceunen, Robbe De Beelde, Jorgen Op de Beeck, Pieter De Frenne, Bram Bauwens, Wolfgang Schmidt and many others for their support during the intense fieldwork campaign across European forests. Thank you, Luc Willems, Greet De Bruyn and An De Schrijver for chemical expertise and performing the analyses. Thanks to Jérôme Buridant for going through numerous forest archives, and Déborah Closset‐Kopp for help with the site selection. Thanks also to the Nature Conservation Agency of Latvia for granting us permission to work in the Moricsala Nature Reserve. Thank you to the two anonymous reviewers who also commented on our paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 German Society for Plant Sciences and The Royal Botanical Society of the Netherlands
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