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Root traits explain plant species distributions along climatic gradients yet challenge the nature of ecological trade-offs

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 1123–1134 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ecological theory is built on trade-offs, where trait differences among species evolved as adaptations to different environments. Trade-offs are often assumed to be bidirectional, where opposite ends of a gradient in trait values confer advantages in different environments. However, unidirectional benefits could be widespread if extreme trait values confer advantages at one end of an environmental gradient, whereas a wide range of trait values are equally beneficial at the other end. Here, we show that root traits explain species occurrences along broad gradients of temperature and water availability, but model predictions only resembled trade-offs in two out of 24 models. Forest species with low specific root length and high root tissue density (RTD) were more likely to occur in warm climates but species with high specific root length and low RTD were more likely to occur in cold climates. Unidirectional benefits were more prevalent than trade-offs: for example, species with large-diameter roots and high RTD were more commonly associated with dry climates, but species with the opposite trait values were not associated with wet climates. Directional selection for traits consistently occurred in cold or dry climates, whereas a diversity of root trait values were equally viable in warm or wet climates. Explicit integration of unidirectional benefits into ecological theory is needed to advance our understanding of the consequences of trait variation on species responses to environmental change.

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Fig. 1: The ecological consequences of trait variation on species distributions along climatic gradients.
Fig. 2: Specific root length and root diameter are related to species occurrences along climatic gradients.
Fig. 3: RTD and root N are related to species occurrences along climatic gradients.

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Data availability

All of the data needed to reproduce the model results can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.25829/idiv.3475-8-2316.

Code availability

All of the code needed to reproduce the model results can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.25829/idiv.3475-8-2316.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig for supporting the sRoot and sPlot working groups and the University of Wyoming Advanced Research Computing Center for technical support. sPlot was initiated by sDiv and funded by the German Research Foundation (FZT 118) and is now a platform of iDiv. The sRoot workshops and L.M. were also supported by NWO-Vidi grant 864.14.006. C.M.I. and the Fine-Root Ecology Database were supported by the Biological and Environmental Research program in the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. J.B. was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project 432975993. N.R.G.-R. thanks the Dorothea Schlözer Postdoctoral Programme of the Georg-August-Universität.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA

    Daniel C. Laughlin

  2. Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Liesje Mommer, Fons van der Plas & Jasper van Ruijven

  3. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Francesco Maria Sabatini, Helge Bruelheide, Jens Kattge, Jürgen Dengler & Alexandra Weigelt

  4. Institute of Biology/Geobotany and Botanical Garden, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Francesco Maria Sabatini & Helge Bruelheide

  5. Soil Biology Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Thom W. Kuyper

  6. Center for Tree Science, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL, USA

    M. Luke McCormack

  7. Sustainable Grassland Systems, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Paulinenaue, Germany

    Joana Bergmann

  8. Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station (SETE), National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Moulis, France

    Grégoire T. Freschet

  9. Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography, Faculty of Forest Sciences and Forest Ecology, University of Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Nathaly R. Guerrero-Ramírez

  10. Climate Change Science Institute and Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Colleen M. Iversen

  11. Functional Biogeography, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany

    Jens Kattge

  12. Functional Forest Ecology, Department of Biology, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Ina C. Meier

  13. Plant Sciences (IBG-2), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany

    Hendrik Poorter

  14. Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Hendrik Poorter

  15. CEFE, University of Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Catherine Roumet

  16. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Marina Semchenko & Christopher J. Sweeney

  17. Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Marina Semchenko

  18. Institute of Environment, Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Oscar J. Valverde-Barrantes

  19. Systematic Botany and Functional Biodiversity, Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

    Fons van der Plas & Alexandra Weigelt

  20. Noble Research Institute, LLC, Ardmore, OK, USA

    Larry M. York

  21. Great Lakes Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada

    Isabelle Aubin

  22. Ecosystems and Conservation, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand

    Olivia R. Burge

  23. Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Andong National University, Andong, Republic of Korea

    Chaeho Byun

  24. Institute of Biology, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, North Macedonia

    Renata Ćušterevska

  25. Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Natural Resource Sciences (IUNR), Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Wädenswil, Switzerland

    Jürgen Dengler

  26. Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER), University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Jürgen Dengler

  27. Normandie Université, UNIROUEN, INRAE, ECODIV, Rouen, France

    Estelle Forey

  28. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Greg R. Guerin

  29. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Greg R. Guerin

  30. CIRAD, UPR Forêts et Sociétés, Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire

    Bruno Hérault

  31. Forêts et Sociétés, University of Montpellier, CIRAD, Montpellier, France

    Bruno Hérault

  32. Institut National Polytechnique Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire

    Bruno Hérault

  33. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Robert B. Jackson

  34. Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford, CA, USA

    Robert B. Jackson

  35. Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, Spatial Evolutionary Ecology, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Dirk Nikolaus Karger

  36. UMR CNRS 7058 ‘Ecologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés (EDYSAN)’, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France

    Jonathan Lenoir

  37. Laboratory of Vegetation Science, Komarov Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Tatiana Lysenko

  38. Laboratory of Phytodiversity Problems and Phytocoenology, Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin, Samara Scientific Center, RAS, Togliatti, Russia

    Tatiana Lysenko

  39. Group of Ecology of living organisms, Tobolsk Complex Scientific Station, Ural Branch, RAS, Tobolsk, Russia

    Tatiana Lysenko

  40. Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Patrick Meir

  41. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Patrick Meir

  42. Crop Science and Plant Biology, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Ülo Niinemets

  43. Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn, Estonia

    Ülo Niinemets

  44. Vegetation, Forest and Landscape Ecology, Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Wim A. Ozinga

  45. CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

  46. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

  47. Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St Paul, MN, USA

    Peter B. Reich

  48. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

    Peter B. Reich

  49. Data and Modelling Centre, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany

    Marco Schmidt

  50. Palmengarten, Frankfurt, Germany

    Marco Schmidt

  51. School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Franziska Schrodt

  52. Sustainable Forest Management Research Institute, University of Valladolid and INIA, Palencia, Spain

    Eduardo Velázquez

  53. School of Agricultural Engineering, University of Valladolid, Palencia, Spain

    Eduardo Velázquez

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  1. Daniel C. Laughlin
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Contributions

A.W., L.M., H.B. and D.C.L. conceived of the idea for the project. All authors were involved with collecting datasets, developing the conceptual framework and interpreting the results. D.C.L., F.M.S. and H.B. performed the statistical analyses. D.C.L. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors commented on and agreed with the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel C. Laughlin.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Benjamin Delory and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Geographic and climatic distribution of vegetation plots.

Distribution of vegetation plots (A) across the globe, and (B) in climate space represented by mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual precipitation (MAT) superimposed onto Whittaker biomes78. The legend for color codes of vegetation types (black=forest, gold=grassland, blue=wetland) can be seen in panels C and D. Note the heavy bias toward North America, Europe, and Asia. Plots are located in all major biomes except tropical rainforest, but the majority of plots are found in temperate grasslands, temperate forests and woodlands, and boreal forest biomes. Note that we do not use the Whittaker biomes in our classification of plots into forest, grassland, and wetlands but rather use the composition data to do so (see Methods). These three vegetation types span a broad range of climate space and it is common to find grassland plots in a forest biome and forest plots within a grassland biome. (C) Plots in climate space using the climate variables that were used in the models (minimum temperature of the coldest month, and the precipitation-to-potential evapotranspiration ratio). (D) Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) of vegetation composition using Bray-Curtis distances. The first axis explains 12% of the variation and the second axis explains 5%. Plots are color-coded according to how they were classified (that is, forest, grassland, wetland) and we illustrate 80% confidence ellipses for each vegetation type. This plot illustrates a random sample of 15,461 plots because analysis of >100,000 observations with >600 species was not computationally feasible within the time limits imposed by high-performance computer clusters.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Species distributions along climatic gradients in relation to their specific root length (SRL) and root tissue density (RTD) in forests and grasslands combined.

The left-column illustrates the modelled distributions of species using quadratic polynomials in the random effects. The y-axis of modeled probabilities of occurrence were square root transformed to amplify distributions of less common species to make them more visible. The right-column illustrates the relationship between optimum climatic conditions and root functional traits for each species, where the dark line illustrates the fitted regression line and the dotted lines represent 95% confidence intervals. Trait values for each species are color-coded using two different color ramps for each trait where dark colors are low trait values and light colors are high trait values. Size of the species symbols is proportional to their occurrence in the dataset. See Supplementary Table 1 for numbers of species in each model.

Extended Data Fig. 3 The occurrences of species-level average trait values of specific root length and root tissue density along two climatic gradients.

Illustration of occurrences of specific root length and root tissue density along the gradients of minimum temperature in the coldest month and the precipitation-to-potential evapotranspiration ratio. The climate gradients are scaled to unit variance below and plotted in their native scale above. The traits are scaled to unit variance on the left and plotted in their native scale to the right.

Extended Data Fig. 4 The occurrences of species-level average trait values of root diameter and root nitrogen along two climatic gradients.

Illustration of occurrences of root diameter and root nitrogen along the gradients of minimum temperature in the coldest month and the precipitation-to-potential evapotranspiration ratio. The climate gradients are scaled to unit variance below and plotted in their native scale above. The traits are scaled to unit variance on the left and plotted in their native scale to the right.

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Laughlin, D.C., Mommer, L., Sabatini, F.M. et al. Root traits explain plant species distributions along climatic gradients yet challenge the nature of ecological trade-offs. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 1123–1134 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01471-7

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