Journal
FRONTIERS IN FORESTS AND GLOBAL CHANGE
Volume 3, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00018
Keywords
environmental filtering; variance partitioning; trait covariation; interspecific; intraspecific
Funding
- European Research Council advanced investigator grant GEM-TRAITS [321131]
- UK Natural Environment Research Council [NE/J023418/1]
- Marie Curie Fellowship [FP7-2012-IEF-327990-TipTropTrans]
- Royal Society-Leverhulme Africa Capacity Building Award
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- NSF [1457812]
- Brazilian National Council of Science and Technology [Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq)] through CNPq/PPBio project [457602]
- Brazilian National Council of Science and Technology [Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq)] through CNPq/PELD (LTER) [403725/2012-7]
- Brazilian National Council of Science and Technology [Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq)] [PQ-2]
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1457812] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Deconstructing functional trait variation and co-variation across a wide range of environmental conditions is necessary to increase the mechanistic understanding of community assembly processes and improve current parameterization of dynamic vegetation models. Here, we present a study that deconstructs leaf trait variation and co-variation into within-species, taxonomic-, and plot-environment components along three tropical environmental gradients in Peru, Brazil, and Ghana. To do so, we measured photosynthetic, chemical, and structural leaf traits using a standardized sampling protocol for more than 1,000 individuals belonging to 367 species. Variation associated with the taxonomic component (species + genus + family) for most traits was relatively consistent across environmental gradients, but within-species variation and plot-environment variation was strongly dependent on the environmental gradient. Trait-trait co-variation was strongly linked to the environmental gradient where traits were measured, although some traits had consistent co-variation components irrespective of gradient. Our results demonstrate that filtering along these tropical gradients is mostly expressed through trait taxonomic variation, but that trait co-variation is strongly dependent on the local environment, and thus global trait co-variation relationships might not always apply at smaller scales and may quickly change under future climate scenarios.
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