Late Quaternary climate legacies in contemporary plant functional composition

Blonder, Benjamin; Enquist, Brian J.; Graae, Bente J.; Kattge, Jens; Maitner, Brian S.; Morueta‐Holme, Naia; Ordonez, Alejandro; Šímová, Irena; Singarayer, Joy; Svenning, Jens‐Christian; Valdes, Paul J.; Violle, Cyrille

doi:10.1111/gcb.14375

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Please note that a newer version of this item is available:
https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2627928_3

DetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Late Quaternary climate legacies in contemporary plant functional composition

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons62433

Kattge, Jens
Interdepartmental Max Planck Fellow Group Functional Biogeography, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Blonder, B., Enquist, B. J., Graae, B. J., Kattge, J., Maitner, B. S., Morueta‐Holme, N., et al. (2018). Late Quaternary climate legacies in contemporary plant functional composition. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.14375.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0001-DABC-6

Abstract

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.