Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Science Career Fair

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Originally published in Science Express on 5 October 2006
Science 3 November 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5800, pp. 812 - 814
DOI: 10.1126/science.1131344
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity

Bill Shipley,1* Denis Vile,1,2 Éric Garnier2

We developed a quantitative method, analogous to those used in statistical mechanics, to predict how biodiversity will vary across environments, which plant species from a species pool will be found in which relative abundances in a given environment, and which plant traits determine community assembly. This provides a scaling from plant traits to ecological communities while bypassing the complications of population dynamics. Our method treats community development as a sorting process involving species that are ecologically equivalent except with respect to particular functional traits, which leads to a constrained random assembly of species; the relative abundance of each species adheres to a general exponential distribution as a function of its traits. Using data for eight functional traits of 30 herbaceous species and community-aggregated values of these traits in 12 sites along a 42-year chronosequence of secondary succession, we predicted 94% of the variance in the relative abundances.

1 Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec J1K 2R1, Canada.
2 Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive, CNRS, UMR 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bill.shipley{at}usherbrooke.ca

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
NUTRIENT TURNOVER RATES IN ANCIENT TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS.
D. L. ROYER (2008)
Palaios 23, 421-423
   Full Text »    PDF »
Microbial Biogeography: From Taxonomy to Traits.
J. L. Green, B. J. M. Bohannan, and R. J. Whitaker (2008)
Science 320, 1039-1043
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Fossil leaf economics quantified: calibration, Eocene case study, and implications.
D. L. Royer, L. Sack, P. Wilf, C. H. Lusk, G. J. Jordan, U. Niinemets, I. J. Wright, M. Westoby, B. Cariglino, P. D. Coley, et al. (2007)
Paleobiology 33, 574-589
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Leaf traits and leaf life spans of two xeric-adapted palmettos.
W. G. Abrahamson (2007)
Am. J. Botany 94, 1297-1308
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Comment on "From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity".
S. H. Roxburgh and K. Mokany (2007)
Science 316, 1425b
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Comment on "From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity".
C. O. Marks and H. C. Muller-Landau (2007)
Science 316, 1425c
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Response to Comments on "From Plant Traits to Plant Communities: A Statistical Mechanistic Approach to Biodiversity".
B. Shipley, D. Vile, and E. Garnier (2007)
Science 316, 1425d
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)