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Plant traits alone are good predictors of ecosystem properties when used carefully

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 7, pages 332–334 (2023)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 16 January 2023

The Original Article was published on 05 October 2020

arising from: F. van der Plas et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01316-9 (2020)

In a recent issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution, van der Plas et al.1 reported that plant functional traits (PFTs) alone were poor predictors of ecosystem properties. They used a literature review to show which PFTs and how many PFTs were typically used to predict ecosystem properties combined with data from a grassland biodiversity experiment to show that, on average, only 12.7% of the variation in 42 ecosystem properties could be explained by the community-weighted mean (CWM, or “functional identity” in their manuscript) or functional diversity (FD) of 41 PFTs (Jena analysis hereafter). Here we argue that their conclusion, that PFTs alone are poor predictors of ecosystem properties, is misleading because (1) there is a mismatch between the PFTs used and the ecosystem properties investigated and (2) CWM and/or FD can explain very little variation in ecosystem functioning in 40% of their plots. Instead, we show that PFTs that have mechanistic links to ecosystem properties have stronger predictive power, indicating that PFTs, when used carefully, can predict ecosystem properties.

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Fig. 1: PFTs are better predictors of certain ecosystem properties.
Fig. 2: Correlation through time of FD and CWM across traits.

Data availability

The existing data used are available from the original publishers. The new data are archived on Figshare at the following link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19087640.v1.

Code availability

All code to reproduce the analysis has been archived on Figshare at the following link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19087640.v1.

References

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge members of the EDGE lab at the University of Gothenburg for stimulating discussions that inspired this comment. Special thanks to A. Bjorkman and R. Bjork for their feedback on the manuscript and to K. Happonen for help with data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    James G. Hagan

  2. Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden

    James G. Hagan & Jonathan J. Henn

  3. Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Jonathan J. Henn

  4. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Jonathan J. Henn

  5. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Wilhelm H. A. Osterman

Authors
  1. James G. Hagan
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  2. Jonathan J. Henn
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  3. Wilhelm H. A. Osterman
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Contributions

All authors conceived the study and collected the data. J.G.H. performed the analysis with help and advice from J.J.H. and W.H.A.O. All authors wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to James G. Hagan.

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Hagan, J.G., Henn, J.J. & Osterman, W.H.A. Plant traits alone are good predictors of ecosystem properties when used carefully. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 332–334 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01920-x

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