ArticleNature communications2022
The evolution of trait variance creates a tension between species diversity and functional diversity.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emerging trends in genome editing of wild animals.Transgenic research · 2026Review
- Different major effects regulating productivity dynamics at different succession stages of monsoon evergreen broad-leaved forests.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Biodegradable plastic exposure enhances microbial functional diversity while reducing taxonomic diversity across multi-kingdom soil microbiota in cherry tomato fields.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Intraspecific Variation and Environmental Determinants of Leaf Functional Traits inPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Reviving collapsed plant-pollinator networks from a single species.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Identification of Individuals of Two Takin Subspecies Using Biological and Ecological Criteria in Eastern Himalayas of China.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Towards holistic insect monitoring: species discovery, description, identification and traits for all insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Article
- The environmental conditions of endemism hotspots shape the functional traits of mammalian assemblages.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Robustness versus productivity during evolutionary community assembly: short-term synergies and long-term trade-offs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
It seems intuitively obvious that species diversity promotes functional diversity: communities with more plant species imply more varied plant leaf chemistry, more species of crops provide more kinds of food, etc. Recent literature has nuanced this view, showing how the relationship between the two can be modulated along latitudinal or environmental gradients. Here we show that even without such effects, the evolution of functional trait variance can erase or even reverse the expected positive relationship between species- and functional diversity. We present theory showing that trait-based eco-evolutionary processes force species to evolve narrower trait breadths in more tightly packed, species-rich communities, in their effort to avoid competition with neighboring species. This effect is so strong that it leads to an overall reduction in trait space coverage whenever a new species establishes. Empirical data from land snail communities on the Galápagos Islands are consistent with this claim. The finding that the relationship between species- and functional diversity can be negative implies that trait data from species-poor communities may misjudge functional diversity in species-rich ones, and vice versa.
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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.