Can functional traits explain phylogenetic signal in the 1 composition of a plant community ? 2

Can functional traits explain phylogenetic signal in the 1 composition of a plant community ?

Using phylogeny and functional traits for assessing community assembly along environmental gradients: A deterministic process driven by elevation

Community assembly processes is the primary focus of community ecology. Using phylogenetic-based and functional trait-based methods jointly to explore these processes along environmental gradients are useful ways to explain the change of assembly mechanisms under changing world. Our study combined these methods to test assembly processes in wide range gradients of elevation and other habitat en...

Independent Evolution of Leaf and Root Traits within and among Temperate Grassland Plant Communities

In this study, we used data from temperate grassland plant communities in Alberta, Canada to test two longstanding hypotheses in ecology: 1) that there has been correlated evolution of the leaves and roots of plants due to selection for an integrated whole-plant resource uptake strategy, and 2) that trait diversity in ecological communities is generated by adaptations to the conditions in diffe...

Neutral lipid fatty acid composition as trait and constraint in Collembola evolution

Functional traits determine the occurrence of species along environmental gradients and their coexistence with other species. Understanding how traits evolved among coexisting species helps to infer community assembly processes. We propose fatty acid composition in consumer tissue as a functional trait related to both food resources and physiological functions of species. We measured phylogenet...

Using Phylogenetic, Functional and Trait Diversity to Understand Patterns of Plant Community Productivity

BACKGROUND Two decades of research showing that increasing plant diversity results in greater community productivity has been predicated on greater functional diversity allowing access to more of the total available resources. Thus, understanding phenotypic attributes that allow species to partition resources is fundamentally important to explaining diversity-productivity relationships. METHO...