Abstract
Functional response traits influence the ability of species to colonize and thrive in a habitat and to persist under environmental challenges. Functional traits can be used to evaluate environment-related processes and phenomena. They also help to interpret distribution patterns, especially under limiting ecological conditions. In this study, we investigate landscape-scale functional distribution responses of beech forests in a climatic transitional zone in Europe. We construct empirical density distribution responses for beech forests by applying coping-resilience-failure climatic traits based on 27 bioclimatic variables, resulting in prevalence-decay-exclusion distribution response patterns. We also perform multivariate exploratory cluster analysis to reveal significant sets of response patterns from the resilience and adaptation aspects. Temperature-related distribution responses presented a prevalence-dominated functional pattern, with Annual mean temperature indicating the most favorable adaptation function. Precipitation indices showed climate-limited response patterns with the dominance of extinction function. Considering regional site-specific climate change projections, these continental beech forests could regress moderately due to temperature increase in the near future. Our results also suggest that both summer and winter precipitation could play a pivotal role in successful resilience. Functions and variables that indicate climate sensitivity can serve as a useful starting point to develop adaptation measures for regional forest management.
Highlights
Functional traits are morphological, biochemical, physiological, structural, phenological or behavioral characteristics of organisms that influence performance or fitness, expressed by their phenotype
Regarding beech forests presence-only data, the exploratory factor analysis resulted in four principal components based on the 27 bioclimatic variables (Table 1)
The most important variable was the Annual precipitation (BIO12), while the Compensated Summer Ombrothermic index (CSOi) was interpreted to have the least importance. In this component in particular, variables with a specific precipitation-temperature ratio were subordinate in the interpretation of beech forests occurrence
Summary
Functional traits are morphological, biochemical, physiological, structural, phenological or behavioral characteristics of organisms that influence performance or fitness, expressed by their phenotype. During the last three decades, the species-based trait concept has been generalized and interpreted at several levels ranging from populations to ecosystems [1,2,3]. This novel approach has been widely used in community and ecosystem ecology to define functional traits addressing the underlying concept that refers to [2,3,4,5,6]. Plant traits can frequently refer to ecological factors changing along a gradient, and researchers can present response traits for environmental resources or common disturbances. Functional response traits connected with an environmental gradient highlight the influence of the environment and the ability of a species to colonize and thrive in a habitat and to persist in the face of environmental
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