Functional traits mediate individualistic species-environment distributions at broad spatial scales while fine-scale species associations remain unpredictable.

ABSTRACT:

Premise

Numerous processes influence plant distributions and co-occurrence patterns, including ecological sorting, limiting similarity, and stochastic effects. To discriminate among these processes and determine the spatial scales at which they operate, we investigated how functional traits and phylogenetic relatedness influence the distribution of temperate forest herbs.

Methods

We surveyed understory plant communities across 257 forest stands in Wisconsin and Michigan (USA) and applied Bayesian phylogenetic linear mixed-effects models (PGLMMs) to quantify how functional traits and phylogenetic relatedness influence the environmental distribution of 139 herbaceous plant species along broad edaphic, climatic, and light gradients. These models also allowed us to test how func

SUBMITTER: Beck JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10099973 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature