Functional trait diversity maximizes ecosystem multifunctionality.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been a core ecological research topic over the last decades. Although a key hypothesis is that the diversity of functional traits determines ecosystem functioning, we do not know how much trait diversity is needed to maintain multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously (multifunctionality). Here, we uncovered a scaling relationship between the abundance distribution of two key plant functional traits (specific leaf area, maximum plant height) and multifunctionality in 124 dryland plant communities spread over all continents except Antarctica. For each trait, we found a strong empirical relationship between the skewness and the kurtosis of the trait distributions that cannot be explained by chance. This relati

SUBMITTER: Gross N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5421574 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature