A trait-based approach to community assembly: partitioning of species trait values into within- and among-community components |
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Authors: | Ackerly D D Cornwell W K |
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Institution: | Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA |
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Abstract: | Plant functional traits vary both along environmental gradients and among species occupying similar conditions, creating a challenge for the synthesis of functional and community ecology. We present a trait-based approach that provides an additive decomposition of species' trait values into alpha and beta components: beta values refer to a species' position along a gradient defined by community-level mean trait values; alpha values are the difference between a species' trait values and the mean of co-occurring taxa. In woody plant communities of coastal California, beta trait values for specific leaf area, leaf size, wood density and maximum height all covary strongly, reflecting species distributions across a gradient of soil moisture availability. Alpha values, on the other hand, are generally not significantly correlated, suggesting several independent axes of differentiation within communities. This trait-based framework provides a novel approach to integrate functional ecology and gradient analysis with community ecology and coexistence theory. |
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Keywords: | Community assembly functional diversity height leaf size niche breadth plant strategies plasticity seed size specific leaf area wood density |
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