Late Quaternary climate legacies in contemporary plant functional composition

Blonder, B., Enquist, B. J., Graae, B. J., Kattge, J., Maitner, B. S., Morueta-Holme, N., Ordonez, A., Šímová, I., Singarayer, J., Svenning, J.-C., Valdes, P. J. and Violle, C. (2018) Late Quaternary climate legacies in contemporary plant functional composition. Global Change Biology, 24 (10). pp. 4827-4840. ISSN 1365-2486 doi: 10.1111/gcb.14375

Abstract/Summary

The functional composition of plant communities is commonly thought to be determined by contemporary climate. However, if rates of climate‐driven immigration and/or exclusion of species are slow, then contemporary functional composition may be explained by paleoclimate as well as by contemporary climate. We tested this idea by coupling contemporary maps of plant functional trait composition across North and South America to paleoclimate means and temporal variation in temperature and precipitation from the Last Interglacial (120 ka) to the present. Paleoclimate predictors strongly improved prediction of contemporary functional composition compared to contemporary climate predictors, with a stronger influence of temperature in North America (especially during periods of ice melting) and of precipitation in South America (across all times). Thus, climate from tens of thousands of years ago influences contemporary functional composition via slow assemblage dynamics.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/78204
Identification Number/DOI	10.1111/gcb.14375
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary centres and themes > Centre for Past Climate Change Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Wiley-Blackwell
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