ArticleNature ecology & evolution2020
Plant traits alone are poor predictors of ecosystem properties and long-term ecosystem functioning.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A Global Meta-Analysis of Passive Experimental Warming Effects on Plant Traits and Community Properties.Global change biology · 2025Pooled it
- A trait-based framework for seagrass ecology: Trends and prospects.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Pooled it
- A trait-based integration of competition and abiotic tolerance underlies plant success.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Species Identity Drives Geographic Variation in Leaf Traits and Palatability to a Generalist Insect Herbivore of a Common Invader.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Using resurvey data to predict changes in ecosystem functioning across protected and unprotected coastal dunes.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Temporal dynamics of rhizosphere microbiome assembly and carbon-phosphorus coupling in poplar-medicinal plant intercropping systems.Microbiome · 2026Article
- METRIN-KG: A knowledge graph integrating plant metabolites, traits, and biotic interactions.GigaScience · 2026Article
- Assessing the multifunctionality of service crops in mediterranean vineyards using a functional trait approach.PloS one · 2026Article
- Rooting for function: community-level fine-root traits relate to many ecosystem functions.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Inferring scalable productivity-related grassland functional diversity in combination with in-situ leaf spectra and Sentinel-2 data.Fundamental research · 2025Article
- The Response of the Functional Traits ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Thresholds of functional trait diversity driven by land use intensification.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Functional diversity shapes the stability of reef fish biomass under global change.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Network-informed analysis of a multivariate trait-space reveals optimal trait selection.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Plant traits shape global spatiotemporal variations in photosynthetic efficiency.Nature plants · 2025Article
- Tree growth is better explained by absorptive fine root traits than by transport fine root traits.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Functional traits mediate the effect of land use on drivers of community stability within and across trophic levels.Science advances · 2025Article
- Whole-plant trait networks reveal elevational optimization of resource strategies: integration drives distribution in woody saplings.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- Priority effects can be explained by competitive traits.Ecology · 2025Article
- Toward a metabolic theory of catchments: Scaling of water and carbon fluxes with size.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
33 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Earth is home to over 350,000 vascular plant species that differ in their traits in innumerable ways. A key challenge is to predict how natural or anthropogenically driven changes in the identity, abundance and diversity of co-occurring plant species drive important ecosystem-level properties such as biomass production or carbon storage. Here, we analyse the extent to which 42 different ecosystem properties can be predicted by 41 plant traits in 78 experimentally manipulated grassland plots over 10 years. Despite the unprecedented number of traits analysed, the average percentage of variation in ecosystem properties jointly explained was only moderate (32.6%) within individual years, and even much lower (12.7%) across years. Most other studies linking ecosystem properties to plant traits analysed no more than six traits and, when including only six traits in our analysis, the average percentage of variation explained in across-year levels of ecosystem properties dropped to 4.8%. Furthermore, we found on average only 12.2% overlap in significant predictors among ecosystem properties, indicating that a small set of key traits able to explain multiple ecosystem properties does not exist. Our results therefore suggest that there are specific limits to the extent to which traits per se can predict the long-term functional consequences of biodiversity change, so that data on additional drivers, such as interacting abiotic factors, may be required to improve predictions of ecosystem property levels.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.