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Reply to: The importance of trait selection in ecology

Nature volume 618, pages E31–E34 (2023)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 28 June 2023

replying to A. Weigelt et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06148-8 (2023)

In the accompanying Comment1, Weigelt et al. (2023) claim that the different conclusions of two studies—Weigelt et al. (2021)2 and Carmona et al. (2021)3—presenting global integrations of aboveground and belowground plant traits are due to methodological issues in Carmona et al. Specifically, ref. 2 concluded that leaf and fine-root traits are coordinated, whereas ref. 3 reported weak covariation between these traits. In their Comment, Weigelt et al. attribute these divergent conclusions to the selection of traits and the use of varimax rotation in ref. 3. Here we estimate angles between pairs of traits in different functional spaces to show that these objections are not supported by the data.

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Fig. 1: The effect of dimensionality reduction and trait selection on the ln–N relationship.
Fig. 2: Rotation and trait selection do not affect trait relationships.

Data availability

All the data used in this paper are from Carmona et al. (2021)3 and are available in the Figshare repository at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13140146.

Code availability

The code used is available in the Supplementary Information.

References

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, specifically PSG293 (C.P.C.), PRG1065 (C.G.B., M.M. and M.Z.), PSG505 (A.T.) and PRG609 (M.P. and R.T.). The European Regional Development Fund also supports C.G.B., R.T., M.P., M.M. and M.Z. through the Centre of Excellence EcolChange, and C.P.C. via the Mobilitas Pluss (MOBERC40) of the Estonian Research Council. C.G.B. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2021‐032533‐I).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: C. Guillermo Bueno, Carlos P. Carmona

Authors and Affiliations

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

    C. Guillermo Bueno, Aurele Toussaint, Mari Moora, Meelis Pärtel, Martin Zobel, Riin Tamme & Carlos P. Carmona

  2. Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (IPE-CSIC), Jaca, Huesca, Spain

    C. Guillermo Bueno

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

    Sabrina Träger

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

    Sabrina Träger

  5. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV), CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina

    Sandra Díaz

  6. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina

    Sandra Díaz

  7. Centre for Forest Research, Département des Sciences du Bois et de la Forêt, Université Laval, Quebec, Quebec, Canada

    Alison D. Munson

Authors
  1. C. Guillermo Bueno
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  2. Aurele Toussaint
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  3. Sabrina Träger
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  4. Sandra Díaz
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  5. Mari Moora
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  6. Alison D. Munson
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  7. Meelis Pärtel
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  8. Martin Zobel
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  9. Riin Tamme
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  10. Carlos P. Carmona
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Contributions

C.G.B. and C.P.C. wrote the first draft, C.P.C. performed the analyses and A.T., S.T., R.T., S.D., M.M., A.M., M.P. and M.Z. contributed with article writing and interpretation of results.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to C. Guillermo Bueno or Carlos P. Carmona.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig.1 Larger differentiation in aboveground than fine-root traits.

Proportion of variance explained in PERMANOVA analyses by differences among groups of species (families and biomes, see Carmona et al.3 for details), considering the whole functional space (Total), the aboveground and fine-root planes, individual components of the functional space and individual traits. This way, fine-root axes (C3 and C4) and traits (SRL, D, N and RTD), and leaf economics spectrum axis (C2) and traits (ln, la, sla) can be compared after removing the dominant effect of size (C1) and size-related traits (ph, sm, ssd) on differences between groups of species. High values of explained variance mean that differences between the members of one group (e.g. differences between families) account for a large proportion of the total variance (in the total space, a specific plane, a specific component or a specific trait). a, Differences between families in the functional space considering different scales: four-dimensional space (total), aboveground plane (in green) and fine-roots plane (in red), the individual components of the trait space (C1 to C4), and the individual traits. b, Differences between biomes.

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Bueno, C.G., Toussaint, A., Träger, S. et al. Reply to: The importance of trait selection in ecology. Nature 618, E31–E34 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06149-7

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