{"id":2435,"date":"2020-10-08T08:29:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T08:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/?p=2435"},"modified":"2020-10-08T08:30:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T08:30:27","slug":"van-der-plas-et-al-in-nature-ecology-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/2020\/10\/08\/van-der-plas-et-al-in-nature-ecology-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"New publication from van der Plas et al. in Nature Ecology &#038; Evolution: Plant traits alone are poor predictors of ecosystem properties and long-term ecosystem functioning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-29.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2436\" width=\"338\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-29.png 694w, \/wp-content\/uploads\/image-29-300x284.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 338px) 100vw, 338px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify\">Earth is home to over 350,000\u2009vascular plant species that differ in  their traits in innumerable ways. A key challenge is to predict how  natural or anthropogenically driven changes in the identity, abundance  and diversity of co-occurring plant species drive important  ecosystem-level properties such as biomass production or carbon storage.  Here, we analyse the extent to which 42\u2009different ecosystem properties  can be predicted by 41\u2009plant traits in 78\u2009experimentally manipulated  grassland plots over 10\u2009years. Despite the unprecedented number of  traits analysed, the average percentage of variation in ecosystem  properties jointly explained was only moderate (32.6%) within individual  years, and even much lower (12.7%) across years. Most other studies  linking ecosystem properties to plant traits analysed no more than six  traits and, when including only six traits in our analysis, the average  percentage of variation explained in across-year levels of ecosystem  properties dropped to 4.8%. Furthermore, we found on average only 12.2%  overlap in significant predictors among ecosystem properties, indicating  that a small set of key traits able to explain multiple ecosystem  properties does not exist. Our results therefore suggest that there are  specific limits to the extent to which traits per se can predict the  long-term functional consequences of biodiversity change, so that data  on additional drivers, such as interacting abiotic factors, may be  required to improve predictions of ecosystem property levels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4>Media Release:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.idiv.de\/en\/news\/news_single_view\/1834.html\">https:\/\/www.idiv.de\/en\/news\/news_single_view\/1834.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4>Reference:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify\">van der Plas, F., Schr\u00f6der-Georgi, T., Weigelt, A. <em>et al.<\/em> Plant traits alone are poor predictors of ecosystem properties and long-term ecosystem functioning. <em>Nat Ecol Evol<\/em>  (2020). <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41559-020-01316-9\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41559-020-01316-9<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earth is home to over 350,000\u2009vascular plant species that differ in their traits in innumerable ways. A key challenge is to predict how natural or anthropogenically driven changes in the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions\/2439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-jena-experiment.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}