Strong paleoclimatic legacies in current plant functional diversity patterns across Europe.

ABSTRACT: Numerous studies indicate that environmental changes during the late Quaternary have elicited long-term disequilibria between species diversity and environment. Despite its importance for ecosystem functioning, the importance of historical environmental conditions as determinants of FD (functional diversity) remains largely unstudied. We quantified the geographic distributions of plant FD (richness and dispersion) across Europe using distribution and functional trait information for 2702 plant species. We then compared the importance of historical and contemporary factors to determine the relevance of past conditions as predictors of current plant FD in Europe. For this, we compared the strength of the relationships between FD with temperature and precipitation stability since the LGM (Las

SUBMITTER: Ordonez A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4870221 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature