Influence of four major plant traits on average height, leaf‐area cover, net primary productivity, and biomass density in single‐species forests: a theoretical investigation

By Daniel S. Falster, Å. Brännström, Ulf Dieckmann, M. Westoby. 2011

132 citations recorded by the source corpus.

1. Numerous plant traits are known to influence aspects of individual performance, including rates of carbon uptake, tissue turnover, mortality and fecundity. These traits are bound to influence emergent properties of vegetation because quantities such as leaf‐area cover, average height, primary productivity and density of standing biomass result from the collective behaviour of individuals. Yet, little is known about the influence of individual traits on these emergent properties, despite the widespread use in current vegetation models of plant functional types, each of which is defined by a constellation of traits.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a677c5976b2a1b7c5173961f0c5d584efdfc03d1

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Citations in the corpus

REVIEW: Predictive ecology in a changing world (2015, background): “Dynamic models based on the understanding of functional trade-offs in plants have also allowed new insights into ecosystem functioning (Falster et al. 2011).”
How fundamental plant functional trait relationships scale‐up to trade‐offs and synergies in ecosystem services (2012, background): “This gradient would drive a trade-off between high total standing biomass in tall and dense communities (Falster et al. 2011), and short vegetation, associated with water conservation owing to low transpiration flows (Schwinning & Ehleringer 2001) and low fire ignition probability owing to fuel…”
Does functional trait diversity predict above‐ground biomass and productivity of tropical forests? Testing three alternative hypotheses (2015, background): “For the dominant species (those forming 60–80% of initial AGB), we measured eight functional traits of known importance for plant growth and survival (Poorter et al. 2008; Wright et al. 2010), and ecosystem biomass stocks and productivity (e.g., Falster et al. 2011; Paquette & Messier 2011).”
Biological constraints on water transport in the soil–plant–atmosphere system (2013, background): “(10) would require the proper accounting of these additional sources of spatial (and functional) variability, either through an individual- or functional type-based approach (possibly involving competition) [53,81], or by assuming realistic distributions of parameters and integrating the water trans”
Interspecific integration of trait dimensions at local scales: the plant phenotype as an integrated network (2017, unknown): “The trait-based approach has been widely adopted in community ecology, with single traits measured at local scales commonly interpreted in the context of trait dimensions (e.g. Jung et al. 2010; Falster et al. 2011; Long et al. 2011; Hulshof et al. 2013; Niu et al. 2015).”
On the link between functional traits and growth rate: meta‐analysis shows effects change with plant size, as predicted (2016, methodology): “Here, wood density and SA/LA are also considered as indicators of stem construction cost (Falster et al. 2011), whereas SLA and leaf thickness capture crucial information about leaf construction cost (Wright et al. 2004).”
Plant functional diversity and carbon storage – an empirical test in semi‐arid forest ecosystems (2013, result): “WSG was also expected to have a positive effect on C storage, on the basis of both theory (Chave et al. 2009; Moles et al. 2009; Falster et al. 2011) and previous empirical studies (Baker et al. 2004; Chave et al. 2005), and appeared to have Soil organic carbon (SOC) SOC = 108.85 102.21 FDiv + 0.06…”
Effects of disturbance intensity on species and functional diversity in a tropical forest (2012, background): “Additionally, the effect traits were assigned to two groups related to decomposition rate (SLA, LDMC, LCh, and Nmass; Cornelissen et al. 1999; Bakker, CarreñoRocabado & Poorter 2011), and net primary productivity (Hmax, WD, SLA, and Nmass; Table S2; Westoby 1998; Falster et al. 2011).”
Towards a trait‐based ecology of wetland vegetation (2017, background): “Due to competition for light, increased canopy height might correlate with higher density and leaf area index (LAI) (Falster et al. 2011), characteristics that would synergistically increase flow resistance.”