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Plant functional traits have globally consistent effects on competition

Abstract

Phenotypic traits and their associated trade-offs have been shown to have globally consistent effects on individual plant physiological functions1,2,3, but how these effects scale up to influence competition, a key driver of community assembly in terrestrial vegetation, has remained unclear4. Here we use growth data from more than 3 million trees in over 140,000 plots across the world to show how three key functional traits—wood density, specific leaf area and maximum height—consistently influence competitive interactions. Fast maximum growth of a species was correlated negatively with its wood density in all biomes, and positively with its specific leaf area in most biomes. Low wood density was also correlated with a low ability to tolerate competition and a low competitive effect on neighbours, while high specific leaf area was correlated with a low competitive effect. Thus, traits generate trade-offs between performance with competition versus performance without competition, a fundamental ingredient in the classical hypothesis that the coexistence of plant species is enabled via differentiation in their successional strategies5. Competition within species was stronger than between species, but an increase in trait dissimilarity between species had little influence in weakening competition. No benefit of dissimilarity was detected for specific leaf area or wood density, and only a weak benefit for maximum height. Our trait-based approach to modelling competition makes generalization possible across the forest ecosystems of the world and their highly diverse species composition.

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Figure 1: Assessing competitive interactions at global scale.
Figure 2: Trait-dependent and trait-independent effects on maximum growth and competition across the globe, and their variation among biomes.
Figure 3: Variation of maximum growth, competitive effects and competitive tolerance with wood density and SLA predicted by global traits models.

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Acknowledgements

We are especially grateful to the researchers whose long-term commitment to establish and maintain forest plots and their associated databases made this study possible, and to those who granted us data access: forest inventories and permanent plots of New Zealand, Spain (MAGRAMA), France, Switzerland, Sweden, US and Canada (for the provinces of Quebec provided by the Ministère des Ressources Naturelles du Québec, Ontario provided by OnTAP’s Growth and Yield Program of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador), CTFS (BCI and LTER-Luquillo), Taiwan (Fushan), Cirad (Paracou with funding by CEBA, ANR-10-LABX-25-01), Cirad, MEFCP and ICRA (M’Baïki) and Japan. We thank MPI-BGC Jena, who host TRY, and the international funding networks supporting TRY (IGBP, DIVERSITAS, GLP, NERC, QUEST, FRB and GIS Climate). G.K. was supported by a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Program (Demo-Traits project, no. 299340). The working group that initiated this synthesis was supported by Macquarie University and by Australian Research Council through a fellowship to M.W.

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Contributions

G.K. and M.W. conceived the study, and with D.F. led a workshop with the participation of D.A.C., F.H., R.M.K., D.C.L., L.P., M.V., G.V. and S.J.W. G.K. wrote the manuscript with key inputs from all workshop participants and help from all authors. G.K., D.F. and F.H. wrote the computer code and processed the data. G.K. devised the main analytical approach and performed analyses with assistance from D.F. for the figures. G.K., D.A.C., D.F., F.H., R.M.K., D.C.L., M.V., G.V., S.J.W., M.A., C.B., J.C., J.H.C.C., S.G.-F., M.H., B.H., J.K., H.K., Y.O., J.P., H.P., M.U., S.R., P.R.-B., I.-F.S., G.S., N.G.S., J.T., B.W., C.W., M.A.Z., H.Z., J.K.Z. and N.E.Z. collected and processed the raw data.

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Correspondence to Georges Kunstler.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 Map of the plot locations of all data sets analysed.

LPP plots are represented with a large points and NFI plots with small points (the Panama data set comprises both a 50 ha plot and a network of 1 ha plots). The world map is from the R package rworldmap131 using Natural Earth data.

Extended Data Figure 2 Average difference between interspecific and intraspecific competition predicted with estimates of trait-independent and trait-dependent processes influencing competition for models fitted for each trait.

ac, Models were fitted for wood density (a), SLA (b) or maximum height (c). The average differences between interspecific and intraspecific competition are influenced by α0intra, α0inter and αd coefficients (see Methods for details). Negative values indicate that intraspecific competition is stronger than interspecific competition.

Extended Data Figure 3 Variation of trait-independent inter and intraspecific competition, trait dissimilarity (|tf − tc| × αd), competitive effect (tc × αe), tolerance to competition (tf × αt) and maximum growth (tf × m1) with wood density, SLA and maximum height.

ao, Wood density (ae), SLA (fj) and maximum height (ko). Trait varied from their quantile at 5% to their quantile at 95%. The shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval of the prediction (including uncertainty associated with α0 or m0). α0intra and α0inter, which do not vary with traits, are represented with their associated confidence intervals.

Extended Data Figure 4 Trait-dependent and trait-independent effects on maximum growth and competition across the globe and their variation among biomes for models without separation of α0 between intra and interspecific competition for wood density, SLA and maximum height.

a, Wood density. b, SLA. c, Maximum height. See Fig. 2 in the main text for parameters description, and see Fig. 1a in the main text for biome definition.

Extended Data Table 1 Standardized coefficient estimates from models fitted for each trait
Extended Data Table 2 Trees data description
Extended Data Table 3 Traits data description
Extended Data Table 4 Species traits pairwise correlations

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Kunstler, G., Falster, D., Coomes, D. et al. Plant functional traits have globally consistent effects on competition. Nature 529, 204–207 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16476

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