Plant trait and vegetation data along a 1314 m elevation gradient with fire history in Puna grasslands, Perú.

Alpine grassland vegetation supports globally important biodiversity and ecosystems that are increasingly threatened by climate warming and other environmental changes. Trait-based approaches can support understanding of vegetation responses to global change drivers and consequences for ecosystem functioning. In six sites along a 1314 m elevational gradient in Puna grasslands in the Peruvian Andes, we collected datasets on vascular plant composition, plant functional traits, biomass, ecosystem fluxes, and climate data over three years. The data were collected in the wet and dry season and from plots with different fire histories. We selected traits associated with plant resource use, growth, and life history strategies (leaf area, leaf dry/wet mass, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf C, N, P content, C and N isotopes). The trait dataset contains 3,665 plant records from 145 taxa, 54,036 trait measurements (increasing the trait data coverage of the regional flora by 420%) covering 14 traits and 121 plant taxa (ca. 40% of which have no previous publicly available trait data) across 33 families.

Climate change and land use threaten global hotspots of phylogenetic endemism for trees.

Across the globe, tree species are under high anthropogenic pressure. Risks of extinction are notably more severe for species with restricted ranges and distinct evolutionary histories. Here, we use a global dataset covering 41,835 species (65.1% of known tree species) to assess the spatial pattern of tree species' phylogenetic endemism, its macroecological drivers, and how future pressures may affect the conservation status of the identified hotspots. We found that low-to-mid latitudes host most endemism hotspots, with current climate being the strongest driver, and climatic stability across thousands to millions of years back in time as a major co-determinant. These hotspots are mostly located outside of protected areas and face relatively high land-use change and future climate change pressure. Our study highlights the risk from climate change for tree diversity and the necessity to strengthen conservation and restoration actions in global hotspots of phylogenetic endemism for trees to avoid major future losses of tree diversity.

Global beta-diversity of angiosperm trees is shaped by Quaternary climate change.

As Earth's climate has varied strongly through geological time, studying the impacts of past climate change on biodiversity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. However, it remains unclear how paleoclimate shapes spatial variation in biodiversity. Here, we assessed the influence of Quaternary climate change on spatial dissimilarity in taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional composition among neighboring 200-kilometer cells (beta-diversity) for angiosperm trees worldwide. We found that larger glacial-interglacial temperature change was strongly associated with lower spatial turnover (species replacements) and higher nestedness (richness changes) components of beta-diversity across all three biodiversity facets. Moreover, phylogenetic and functional turnover was lower and nestedness higher than random expectations based on taxonomic beta-diversity in regions that experienced large temperature change, reflecting phylogenetically and functionally selective processes in species replacement, extinction, and colonization during glacial-interglacial oscillations. Our results suggest that future human-driven climate change could cause local homogenization and reduction in taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of angiosperm trees worldwide.

Geographic name resolution service: A tool for the standardization and indexing of world political division names, with applications to species distribution modeling.

Massive biological databases of species occurrences, or georeferenced locations where a species has been observed, are essential inputs for modeling present and future species distributions. Location accuracy is often assessed by determining whether the observation geocoordinates fall within the boundaries of the declared political divisions. This otherwise simple validation is complicated by the difficulty of matching political division names to the correct geospatial object. Spelling errors, abbreviations, alternative codes, and synonyms in multiple languages present daunting name disambiguation challenges. The inability to resolve political division names reduces usable data, and analysis of erroneous observations can lead to flawed results. Here, we present the Geographic Name Resolution Service (GNRS), an application for correcting, standardizing, and indexing world political division names. The GNRS resolves political division names against a reference database that combines names and codes from GeoNames with geospatial object identifiers from the Global Administrative Areas Database (GADM). In a trial resolution of political division names extracted from >270 million species occurrences, only 1.9%, representing just 6% of occurrences, matched exactly to GADM political divisions in their original form. The GNRS was able to resolve, completely or in part, 92% of the remaining 378,568 political division names, or 86% of the full biodiversity occurrence dataset. In assessing geocoordinate accuracy for >239 million species occurrences, resolution of political divisions by the GNRS enabled the detection of an order of magnitude more errors and an order of magnitude more error-free occurrences. By providing a novel solution to a significant data quality impediment, the GNRS liberates a tremendous amount of biodiversity data for quantitative biodiversity research. The GNRS runs as a web service and is accessible via an API, an R package, and a web-based graphical user interface. Its modular architecture is easily integrated into existing data validation workflows.

High exposure of global tree diversity to human pressure.

Safeguarding Earth's tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We quantify range protection and anthropogenic pressures for each species and develop conservation priorities across taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity dimensions. We also assess the effectiveness of several influential proposed conservation prioritization frameworks to protect the top 17% and top 50% of tree priority areas. We find that an average of 50.2% of a tree species' range occurs in 110-km grid cells without any protected areas (PAs), with 6,377 small-range tree species fully unprotected, and that 83% of tree species experience nonnegligible human pressure across their range on average. Protecting high-priority areas for the top 17% and 50% priority thresholds would increase the average protected proportion of each tree species' range to 65.5% and 82.6%, respectively, leaving many fewer species (2,151 and 2,010) completely unprotected. The priority areas identified for trees match well to the Global 200 Ecoregions framework, revealing that priority areas for trees would in large part also optimize protection for terrestrial biodiversity overall. Based on range estimates for >46,000 tree species, our findings show that a large proportion of tree species receive limited protection by current PAs and are under substantial human pressure. Improved protection of biodiversity overall would also strongly benefit global tree diversity.

Next-generation field courses: Integrating Open Science and online learning.

As Open Science practices become more commonplace, there is a need for the next generation of scientists to be well versed in these aspects of scientific research. Yet, many training opportunities for early career researchers (ECRs) could better emphasize or integrate Open Science elements. Field courses provide opportunities for ECRs to apply theoretical knowledge, practice new methodological approaches, and gain an appreciation for the challenges of real-life research, and could provide an excellent platform for integrating training in Open Science practices. Our recent experience, as primarily ECRs engaged in a field course interrupted by COVID-19, led us to reflect on the potential to enhance learning outcomes in field courses by integrating Open Science practices and online learning components. Specifically, we highlight the opportunity for field courses to align teaching activities with the recent developments and trends in how we conduct research, including training in: publishing registered reports, collecting data using standardized methods, adopting high-quality data documentation, managing data through reproducible workflows, and sharing and publishing data through appropriate channels. We also discuss how field courses can use online tools to optimize time in the field, develop open access resources, and cultivate collaborations. By integrating these elements, we suggest that the next generation of field courses will offer excellent arenas for participants to adopt Open Science practices.

Plant traits and vegetation data from climate warming experiments along an 1100 m elevation gradient in Gongga Mountains, China.

Functional trait data enhance climate change research by linking climate change, biodiversity response, and ecosystem functioning, and by enabling comparison between systems sharing few taxa. Across four sites along a 3000-4130 m a.s.l. gradient spanning 5.3 °C in growing season temperature in Mt. Gongga, Sichuan, China, we collected plant functional trait and vegetation data from control plots, open top chambers (OTCs), and reciprocally transplanted vegetation turfs. Over five years, we recorded vascular plant composition in 140 experimental treatment and control plots. We collected trait data associated with plant resource use, growth, and life history strategies (leaf area, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf C, N and P content and C and N isotopes) from local populations and from experimental treatments. The database consists of 6,671 plant records and 36,743 trait measurements (increasing the trait data coverage of the regional flora by 500%) covering 11 traits and 193 plant taxa (ca. 50% of which have no previous published trait data) across 37 families.

Darwin's naturalization conundrum can be explained by spatial scale.

Darwin proposed two seemingly contradictory hypotheses regarding factors influencing the outcome of biological invasions. He initially posited that nonnative species closely related to native species would be more likely to successfully establish, because they might share adaptations to the local environment (preadaptation hypothesis). However, based on observations that the majority of naturalized plant species in the United States belonged to nonnative genera, he concluded that the lack of competitive exclusion would facilitate the establishment of alien invaders phylogenetically distinct from the native flora (competition-relatedness hypothesis). To date, no consensus has been reached regarding these opposing hypotheses. Here, following Darwin, we use the flora of the United States to examine patterns of taxonomic and phylogenetic relatedness between native and nonnative taxa across thousands of nested locations ranging in size and extent, from local to regional scales. We find that the probability of observing the signature of environmental filtering over that of competition increases with spatial scale. Further, native and nonnative species tended to be less related in warm, humid environments. Our work provides an empirical assessment of the role of observation scale and climate in biological invasions and demonstrates that Darwin's two opposing hypotheses need not be mutually exclusive.

Leaf size of woody dicots predicts ecosystem primary productivity.

A key challenge in ecology is to understand the relationships between organismal traits and ecosystem processes. Here, with a novel dataset of leaf length and width for 10 480 woody dicots in China and 2374 in North America, we show that the variation in community mean leaf size is highly correlated with the variation in climate and ecosystem primary productivity, independent of plant life form. These relationships likely reflect how natural selection modifies leaf size across varying climates in conjunction with how climate influences canopy total leaf area. We find that the leaf size-primary productivity functions based on the Chinese dataset can predict productivity in North America and vice-versa. In addition to advancing understanding of the relationship between a climate-driven trait and ecosystem functioning, our findings suggest that leaf size can also be a promising tool in palaeoecology for scaling from fossil leaves to palaeo-primary productivity of woody ecosystems.

Publisher Correction: Open Science principles for accelerating trait-based science across the Tree of Life.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Open Science principles for accelerating trait-based science across the Tree of Life.

Synthesizing trait observations and knowledge across the Tree of Life remains a grand challenge for biodiversity science. Species traits are widely used in ecological and evolutionary science, and new data and methods have proliferated rapidly. Yet accessing and integrating disparate data sources remains a considerable challenge, slowing progress toward a global synthesis to integrate trait data across organisms. Trait science needs a vision for achieving global integration across all organisms. Here, we outline how the adoption of key Open Science principles-open data, open source and open methods-is transforming trait science, increasing transparency, democratizing access and accelerating global synthesis. To enhance widespread adoption of these principles, we introduce the Open Traits Network (OTN), a global, decentralized community welcoming all researchers and institutions pursuing the collaborative goal of standardizing and integrating trait data across organisms. We demonstrate how adherence to Open Science principles is key to the OTN community and outline five activities that can accelerate the synthesis of trait data across the Tree of Life, thereby facilitating rapid advances to address scientific inquiries and environmental issues. Lessons learned along the path to a global synthesis of trait data will provide a framework for addressing similarly complex data science and informatics challenges.

Informing trait-based ecology by assessing remotely sensed functional diversity across a broad tropical temperature gradient.

Spatially continuous data on functional diversity will improve our ability to predict global change impacts on ecosystem properties. We applied methods that combine imaging spectroscopy and foliar traits to estimate remotely sensed functional diversity in tropical forests across an Amazon-to-Andes elevation gradient (215 to 3537 m). We evaluated the scale dependency of community assembly processes and examined whether tropical forest productivity could be predicted by remotely sensed functional diversity. Functional richness of the community decreased with increasing elevation. Scale-dependent signals of trait convergence, consistent with environmental filtering, play an important role in explaining the range of trait variation within each site and along elevation. Single- and multitrait remotely sensed measures of functional diversity were important predictors of variation in rates of net and gross primary productivity. Our findings highlight the potential of remotely sensed functional diversity to inform trait-based ecology and trait diversity-ecosystem function linkages in hyperdiverse tropical forests.

Metabolic asymmetry and the global diversity of marine predators.

Species richness of marine mammals and birds is highest in cold, temperate seas-a conspicuous exception to the general latitudinal gradient of decreasing diversity from the tropics to the poles. We compiled a comprehensive dataset for 998 species of sharks, fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds to identify and quantify inverse latitudinal gradients in diversity, and derived a theory to explain these patterns. We found that richness, phylogenetic diversity, and abundance of marine predators diverge systematically with thermoregulatory strategy and water temperature, reflecting metabolic differences between endotherms and ectotherms that drive trophic and competitive interactions. Spatial patterns of foraging support theoretical predictions, with total prey consumption by mammals increasing by a factor of 80 from the equator to the poles after controlling for productivity.

Intraspecific Trait Variation and Phenotypic Plasticity Mediate Alpine Plant Species Response to Climate Change.

In a rapidly changing climate, alpine plants may persist by adapting to new conditions. However, the rate at which the climate is changing might exceed the rate of adaptation through evolutionary processes in long-lived plants. Persistence may depend on phenotypic plasticity in morphology and physiology. Here we investigated patterns of leaf trait variation including leaf area, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf nutrients (C, N, P) and isotopes (δ13C and δ15N) across an elevation gradient on Gongga Mountain, Sichuan Province, China. We quantified inter- and intra-specific trait variation and the plasticity in leaf traits of selected species to experimental warming and cooling by using a reciprocal transplantation approach. We found substantial phenotypic plasticity in most functional traits where δ15N, leaf area, and leaf P showed greatest plasticity. These traits did not correspond with traits with the largest amount of intraspecific variation. Plasticity in leaf functional traits tended to enable plant populations to shift their trait values toward the mean values of a transplanted plants' destination community, but only if that population started with very different trait values. These results suggest that leaf trait plasticity is an important mechanism for enabling plants to persist within communities and to better tolerate changing environmental conditions under climate change.

Late Quaternary climate legacies in contemporary plant functional composition.

The functional composition of plant communities is commonly thought to be determined by contemporary climate. However, if rates of climate-driven immigration and/or exclusion of species are slow, then contemporary functional composition may be explained by paleoclimate as well as by contemporary climate. We tested this idea by coupling contemporary maps of plant functional trait composition across North and South America to paleoclimate means and temporal variation in temperature and precipitation from the Last Interglacial (120 ka) to the present. Paleoclimate predictors strongly improved prediction of contemporary functional composition compared to contemporary climate predictors, with a stronger influence of temperature in North America (especially during periods of ice melting) and of precipitation in South America (across all times). Thus, climate from tens of thousands of years ago influences contemporary functional composition via slow assemblage dynamics.

A roadmap for global synthesis of the plant tree of life.

Providing science and society with an integrated, up-to-date, high quality, open, reproducible and sustainable plant tree of life would be a huge service that is now coming within reach. However, synthesizing the growing body of DNA sequence data in the public domain and disseminating the trees to a diverse audience are often not straightforward due to numerous informatics barriers. While big synthetic plant phylogenies are being built, they remain static and become quickly outdated as new data are published and tree-building methods improve. Moreover, the body of existing phylogenetic evidence is hard to navigate and access for non-experts. We propose that our community of botanists, tree builders, and informaticians should converge on a modular framework for data integration and phylogenetic analysis, allowing easy collaboration, updating, data sourcing and flexible analyses. With support from major institutions, this pipeline should be re-run at regular intervals, storing trees and their metadata long-term. Providing the trees to a diverse global audience through user-friendly front ends and application development interfaces should also be a priority. Interactive interfaces could be used to solicit user feedback and thus improve data quality and to coordinate the generation of new data. We conclude by outlining a number of steps that we suggest the scientific community should take to achieve global phylogenetic synthesis.

A comparative approach to testing hypotheses for the evolution of sex-biased dispersal in bean beetles.

Understanding the selective forces that shape dispersal strategies is a fundamental goal of evolutionary ecology and is increasingly important in changing, human-altered environments. Sex-biased dispersal (SBD) is common in dioecious taxa, and understanding variation in the direction and magnitude of SBD across taxa has been a persistent challenge. We took a comparative, laboratory-based approach using 16 groups (species or strains) of bean beetles (genera Acanthoscelides, Callosobruchus, and Zabrotes, including 10 strains of one species) to test two predictions that emerge from dominant hypotheses for the evolution of SBD: (1) groups that suffer greater costs of inbreeding should exhibit greater SBD in favor of either sex (inbreeding avoidance hypothesis) and (2) groups with stronger local mate competition should exhibit greater male bias in dispersal (kin competition avoidance hypothesis). We used laboratory experiments to quantify SBD in crawling dispersal, the fitness effects of inbreeding, and the degree of polygyny (number of female mates per male), a proxy for local mate competition. While we found that both polygyny and male-biased dispersal were common across bean beetle groups, consistent with the kin competition avoidance hypothesis, quantitative relationships between trait values did not support the predictions. Across groups, there was no significant association between SBD and effects of inbreeding nor SBD and degree of polygyny, using either raw values or phylogenetically independent contrasts. We discuss possible limitations of our experimental approach for detecting the predicted relationships, as well as reasons why single-factor hypotheses may be too simplistic to explain the evolution of SBD.

Does phylogeny matter? Assessing the impact of phylogenetic information in ecological meta-analysis.

Meta-analysis is increasingly used in ecology and evolutionary biology. Yet, in these fields this technique has an important limitation: phylogenetic non-independence exists among taxa, violating the statistical assumptions underlying traditional meta-analytic models. Recently, meta-analytical techniques incorporating phylogenetic information have been developed to address this issue. However, no syntheses have evaluated how often including phylogenetic information changes meta-analytic results. To address this gap, we built phylogenies for and re-analysed 30 published meta-analyses, comparing results for traditional vs. phylogenetic approaches and assessing which characteristics of phylogenies best explained changes in meta-analytic results and relative model fit. Accounting for phylogeny significantly changed estimates of the overall pooled effect size in 47% of datasets for fixed-effects analyses and 7% of datasets for random-effects analyses. Accounting for phylogeny also changed whether those effect sizes were significantly different from zero in 23 and 40% of our datasets (for fixed- and random-effects models, respectively). Across datasets, decreases in pooled effect size magnitudes after incorporating phylogenetic information were associated with larger phylogenies and those with stronger phylogenetic signal. We conclude that incorporating phylogenetic information in ecological meta-analyses is important, and we provide practical recommendations for doing so.