TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kunstler, Georges
AU  - Falster, Daniel
AU  - Coomes, David A.
AU  - Hui, Francis
AU  - Kooyman, Robert M.
AU  - Laughlin, Daniel C.
AU  - Poorter, Lourens
AU  - Vanderwel, Mark
AU  - Vieilledent, Ghislain
AU  - Wright, S. Joseph
AU  - Aiba, Masahiro
AU  - Baraloto, Christopher
AU  - Caspersen, John
AU  - Cornelissen, J. Hans C.
AU  - Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie
AU  - Hanewinkel, Marc
AU  - Herault, Bruno
AU  - Kattge, Jens
AU  - Kurokawa, Hiroko
AU  - Onoda, Yusuke
AU  - Peñuelas, Josep
AU  - Poorter, Hendrik
AU  - Uriarte, Maria
AU  - Richardson, Sarah
AU  - Ruiz-Benito, Paloma
AU  - Sun, I-Fang
AU  - Ståhl, Göran
AU  - Swenson, Nathan G.
AU  - Thompson, Jill
AU  - Westerlund, Bertil
AU  - Wirth, Christian
AU  - Zavala, Miguel A.
AU  - Zeng, Hongcheng
AU  - Zimmerman, Jess K.
AU  - Zimmermann, Niklaus E.
AU  - Westoby, Mark
TI  - Plant functional traits have globally consistent effects on competition
JO  - Nature 
VL  - 529
SN  - 1476-4687
CY  - London [u.a.]
PB  - Nature Publ. Group78092
M1  - FZJ-2016-00098
SP  - 204–207
PY  - 2015
AB  - Phenotypic traits and their associated trade-offs have been shown to have globally consistent effects on individual plant physiological functions1, 2, 3, but how these effects scale up to influence competition, a key driver of community assembly in terrestrial vegetation, has remained unclear4. Here we use growth data from more than 3 million trees in over 140,000 plots across the world to show how three key functional traits—wood density, specific leaf area and maximum height—consistently influence competitive interactions. Fast maximum growth of a species was correlated negatively with its wood density in all biomes, and positively with its specific leaf area in most biomes. Low wood density was also correlated with a low ability to tolerate competition and a low competitive effect on neighbours, while high specific leaf area was correlated with a low competitive effect. Thus, traits generate trade-offs between performance with competition versus performance without competition, a fundamental ingredient in the classical hypothesis that the coexistence of plant species is enabled via differentiation in their successional strategies5. Competition within species was stronger than between species, but an increase in trait dissimilarity between species had little influence in weakening competition. No benefit of dissimilarity was detected for specific leaf area or wood density, and only a weak benefit for maximum height. Our trait-based approach to modelling competition makes generalization possible across the forest ecosystems of the world and their highly diverse species composition.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000368015700035
C6  - pmid:26700807
DO  - DOI:10.1038/nature16476
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/280309
ER  -