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Title: Continental scale structuring of forest and soil diversity via functional traits

Abstract

Trait-based ecology claims to offer a mechanistic approach for explaining the drivers that structure biological diversity and predicting the responses of species, trophic interactions and ecosystems to environmental change. However, support for this claim is lacking across broad taxonomic groups. A framework for defining ecosystem processes in terms of the functional traits of their constituent taxa across large spatial scales is needed. Here, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the linkages between climate, plant traits and soil microbial traits at many sites spanning a broad latitudinal temperature gradient from tropical to subalpine forests. Our results show that temperature drives coordinated shifts in most plant and soil bacterial traits but these relationships are not observed for most fungal traits. Shifts in plant traits are mechanistically associated with soil bacterial functional traits related to carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycling, indicating that microbial processes are tightly linked to variation in plant traits that influence rates of ecosystem decomposition and nutrient cycling. In conclusion, our results are consistent with hypotheses that diversity gradients reflect shifts in phenotypic optima signifying local temperature adaptation mediated by soil nutrient availability and metabolism. They underscore the importance of temperature in structuring the functional diversity ofmore » plants and soil microbes in forest ecosystems and how this is coupled to biogeochemical processes via functional traits.« less

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [4];  [4];  [4]; ORCiD logo [4];  [4]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5];  [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
  2. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
  3. Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States). Inst. for Environmental Genomics; Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
  4. Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States). Inst. for Environmental Genomics
  5. Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States)
  6. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1581077
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Ecology and Evolution
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 3; Journal Issue: 9; Journal ID: ISSN 2397-334X
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Citation Formats

Buzzard, Vanessa, Michaletz, Sean T., Deng, Ye, He, Zhili, Ning, Daliang, Shen, Lina, Tu, Qichao, Van Nostrand, Joy D., Voordeckers, James W., Wang, Jianjun, Weiser, Michael D., Kaspari, Michael, Waide, Robert B., Zhou, Jizhong, and Enquist, Brian J. Continental scale structuring of forest and soil diversity via functional traits. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.1038/s41559-019-0954-7.
Buzzard, Vanessa, Michaletz, Sean T., Deng, Ye, He, Zhili, Ning, Daliang, Shen, Lina, Tu, Qichao, Van Nostrand, Joy D., Voordeckers, James W., Wang, Jianjun, Weiser, Michael D., Kaspari, Michael, Waide, Robert B., Zhou, Jizhong, & Enquist, Brian J. Continental scale structuring of forest and soil diversity via functional traits. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0954-7
Buzzard, Vanessa, Michaletz, Sean T., Deng, Ye, He, Zhili, Ning, Daliang, Shen, Lina, Tu, Qichao, Van Nostrand, Joy D., Voordeckers, James W., Wang, Jianjun, Weiser, Michael D., Kaspari, Michael, Waide, Robert B., Zhou, Jizhong, and Enquist, Brian J. Mon . "Continental scale structuring of forest and soil diversity via functional traits". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0954-7. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1581077.
@article{osti_1581077,
title = {Continental scale structuring of forest and soil diversity via functional traits},
author = {Buzzard, Vanessa and Michaletz, Sean T. and Deng, Ye and He, Zhili and Ning, Daliang and Shen, Lina and Tu, Qichao and Van Nostrand, Joy D. and Voordeckers, James W. and Wang, Jianjun and Weiser, Michael D. and Kaspari, Michael and Waide, Robert B. and Zhou, Jizhong and Enquist, Brian J.},
abstractNote = {Trait-based ecology claims to offer a mechanistic approach for explaining the drivers that structure biological diversity and predicting the responses of species, trophic interactions and ecosystems to environmental change. However, support for this claim is lacking across broad taxonomic groups. A framework for defining ecosystem processes in terms of the functional traits of their constituent taxa across large spatial scales is needed. Here, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the linkages between climate, plant traits and soil microbial traits at many sites spanning a broad latitudinal temperature gradient from tropical to subalpine forests. Our results show that temperature drives coordinated shifts in most plant and soil bacterial traits but these relationships are not observed for most fungal traits. Shifts in plant traits are mechanistically associated with soil bacterial functional traits related to carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycling, indicating that microbial processes are tightly linked to variation in plant traits that influence rates of ecosystem decomposition and nutrient cycling. In conclusion, our results are consistent with hypotheses that diversity gradients reflect shifts in phenotypic optima signifying local temperature adaptation mediated by soil nutrient availability and metabolism. They underscore the importance of temperature in structuring the functional diversity of plants and soil microbes in forest ecosystems and how this is coupled to biogeochemical processes via functional traits.},
doi = {10.1038/s41559-019-0954-7},
journal = {Nature Ecology and Evolution},
number = 9,
volume = 3,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2019},
month = {Mon Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2019}
}

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