title: The emergence and promise of functional biogeography.
abstract: Understanding, modeling, and predicting the impact of global change on ecosystem functioning across biogeographical gradients can benefit from enhanced capacity to represent biota as a continuous distribution of traits. However, this is a challenge for the field of biogeography historically grounded on the species concept. Here we focus on the newly emergent field of functional biogeography: the study of the geographic distribution of trait diversity across organizational levels. We show how functional biogeography bridges species-based biogeography and earth science to provide ideas and tools to help explain gradients in multifaceted diversity (including species, functional, and phylogenetic diversities), predict ecosystem functioning and services worldwide, and infuse regional and global conservation programs with a functional basis. Although much recent progress has been made possible because of the rising of multiple data streams, new developments in ecoinformatics, and new methodological advances, future directions should provide a theoretical and comprehensive framework for the scaling of biotic interactions across trophic levels and its ecological implications.
authors.affiliation: Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionelle et Evolutive, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5175, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, École Pratique des Hautes Études, F-34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France; Centre de Synthèse et d'Analyse sur la Biodiversité/Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité, Domaine du Petit Arbois, Avenue Louis Philibert, 13545 Aix-en-Provence, France; cyrille.violle@cefe.cnrs.fr.
authors.forename: Cyrille
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Violle
authors.affiliation: Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia;
authors.forename: Peter B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Reich
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544;
authors.forename: Stephen W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Pacala
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501; The iPlant Collaborative, Tucson, AZ 85721;
authors.forename: Brian J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Enquist
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745 Jena, Germany; and German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kattge
mesh_terms: D058448:Biota / Q000502:physiology*; D058974:Phylogeography / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*
keywords: biodiversity; functional trait; predictive ecology