Abstract
Current and historical environmental conditions are known to determine jointly contemporary species distributions and richness patterns. However, whether historical dynamics in species distributions and richness translate to functional diversity patterns remains, for the most part, unknown. The geographic patterns of plant functional space size (richness) and packing (dispersion) for six widely distributed orders of European angiosperms were estimated using atlas distribution data and trait information. Then the relative importance of late-Quaternary glacial-interglacial climate change and contemporary environmental factors (climate, productivity, and topography) as determinants of functional diversity of evaluated orders was assesed. Functional diversity patterns of all evaluated orders exhibited prominent glacial-interglacial climate change imprints, complementing the influence of contemporary environmental conditions. The importance of Quaternary glacial-interglacial climate change factors was comparable to that of contemporary environmental factors across evaluated orders. Therefore, high long-term paleoclimate variability has imposed consistent supplementary constraints on functional diversity of multiple plant groups, a legacy that may permeate to ecosystem functioning and resilience. These findings suggest that strong near-future anthropogenic climate change may elicit long-term functional disequilibria in plant functional diversity.
Highlights
Species diversity displays distinct large-scale geographic patterns, which in turn are controlled by both historical and contemporary environmental conditions
Historical climatic conditions might filter out physiologically or ecologically unsuitable species from either the local assemblage or the metacommunity species pool based on their functional attributes[10,23,24], resulting in local functional assemblages not representing the full array of viable attributes given current environmental conditions[15]
This study aims to assess the influence of historical climatic conditions by answering two previously unexamined questions: (1) Do plant functional diversity (FD) geographic patterns of multiple evolutionary independent European plant groups exhibit prominent late-Quaternary glacial-interglacial climate change imprints? (2) How does the importance of historical environmental conditions compare to that of contemporary factors across multiple evolutionary independent European plant groups? To answer these questions, the geographic patterns in functional richness (FRich) and functional dispersion (FDisp) for six widely distributed and species rich orders of European angiosperms were estimated, by combining data on species distributions from the Atlas Florae Europaeae[36] with trait information
Summary
Species diversity displays distinct large-scale geographic patterns, which in turn are controlled by both historical and contemporary environmental conditions. The European flora provides one of the best-known examples of how current species distributions and richness patterns are strongly affected by contemporary climatic conditions[1,2], and environmental changes linked to late Quaternary glacial-interglacial climate change[3,4,5]. The working hypotheses of this study are: (1) Geographical patterns in functional diversity will be consistent across phylogenetically independent functional groups; (2) the effects of historical climate change over the last 21,000 years as an important co-determinant of functional richness (FRich – size or range of the trait space28,29) and functional dispersion (FDisp – packing of the trait space30) should be seen consistently across phylogenetically independent groups The reasoning behind this hypothesis is that climatically stable and suitable conditions promote a wider coverage of the viable trait space[24] and a more uniform functional differentiation among concurring species[24,31]. Using spatial autoregressive models (SAR) and information theory approaches (see Methods), we evaluated the link between contemporary FD patterns and both late-Quaternary glacial-interglacial climate change (here measured via climate velocity; see Methods) and proximity to glacial refugia (here measured as accessibility; see Methods), while accounting for contemporary environmental effects
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