title: Functional traits explain variation in plant life history strategies.
abstract: Ecologists seek general explanations for the dramatic variation in species abundances in space and time. An increasingly popular solution is to predict species distributions, dynamics, and responses to environmental change based on easily measured anatomical and morphological traits. Trait-based approaches assume that simple functional traits influence fitness and life history evolution, but rigorous tests of this assumption are lacking, because they require quantitative information about the full lifecycles of many species representing different life histories. Here, we link a global traits database with empirical matrix population models for 222 species and report strong relationships between functional traits and plant life histories. Species with large seeds, long-lived leaves, or dense wood have slow life histories, with mean fitness (i.e., population growth rates) more strongly influenced by survival than by growth or fecundity, compared with fast life history species with small seeds, short-lived leaves, or soft wood. In contrast to measures of demographic contributions to fitness based on whole lifecycles, analyses focused on raw demographic rates may underestimate the strength of association between traits and mean fitness. Our results help establish the physiological basis for plant life history evolution and show the potential for trait-based approaches in population dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322.
authors.forename: Peter B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Adler
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Salguero-Gómez
authors.forename: Aldo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Compagnoni
authors.forename: Joanna S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Jayanti
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ray-Mukherjee
authors.forename: Cyril
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mbeau-Ache
authors.forename: Miguel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Franco
mesh_terms: D000220:Adaptation, Biological / Q000502:physiology*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005298:Fertility / Q000502:physiology; D056084:Genetic Fitness / Q000502:physiology*; D010802:Phylogeny; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000502:physiology; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena / Q000502:physiology*; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012639:Seeds / Q000166:cytology; D013045:Species Specificity; D014934:Wood / Q000502:physiology
keywords: elasticity; seed size; specific leaf area; vital rates; wood intensity