Nature ecology & evolution | 气候和土壤条件影响全球植物功能性状（植株、器官大小及叶片性状等）的变异

Plant functional traits can predict community assembly and ecosystem functioning and are thus widely used in global models of vegetation dynamics and land–climate feedbacks. Still, we lack a global understanding of how land and climate affect plant traits. A previous global analysis of six traits observed two main axes of variation: (1) size variation at the organ and plant level and (2) leaf economics balancing leaf persistence against plant growth potential. The orthogonality of these two axes suggests they are differently influenced by environmental drivers. We find that these axes persist in a global dataset of 17 traits across more than 20,000 species. We find a dominant joint effect of climate and soil on trait variation. Additional independent climate effects are also observed across most traits, whereas independent soil effects are almost exclusively observed for economics traits. Variation in size traits correlates well with a latitudinal gradient related to water or energy limitation. In contrast, variation in economics traits is better explained by interactions of climate with soil fertility. These findings have the potential to improve our understanding of biodiversity patterns and our predictions of climate change impacts on biogeochemical cycles.

此研究将会加深我们对于广泛植物功能模式的理解。尤其是气候和土壤对性状变异的独立影响，以及它们所联合的影响。以往的研究总是仅考虑单一因素的影响，但作者在此研究中考虑了更加全面的因素。通过这种方法，作者得到了非常重要的结论，关于气候和土壤间的相互作用是如何驱动全球植物性状上的变异以及气候和土壤因素在影响植物性状时最主要的区别是什么？这要求研究学者需要在全球气候变化的动态过程中增加我们预测植物功能性变异的能力。

原文链接：

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01616-8

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