The most unique feature of Earth is the existence of life, and the most extraordinary feature of life is its diversity. Approximately 9 million types of plants, animals, protists and fungi inhabit the Earth. So, too, do 7 billion people. Two decades ago, at the first Earth Summit, the vast majority of the world's nations declared that human actions were dismantling the Earth's ecosystems, eliminating genes, species and biological traits at an alarming rate. This observation led to the question of how such loss of biological diversity will alter the functioning of ecosystems and their ability to provide society with the goods and services needed to prosper.

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Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity

Cause, conseguenze e strategie di mitigazione Proponiamo il primo di una serie di articoli in cui affronteremo l’attuale problema dei mutamenti climatici. Presentiamo il documento redatto, votato e pubblicato dall’Ipcc - Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - che illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.

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Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

Plant functional traits are the features (morphological, physiological, phenological) that represent ecological strategies and determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels and influence ecosystem properties. Variation in plant functional traits, and trait syndromes, has proven useful for tackling many important ecological questions at a range of scales, giving rise to a demand for standardised ways to measure ecologically meaningful plant traits. This line of research has been among the most fruitful avenues for understanding ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes. It also has the potential both to build a predictive set of local, regional and global relationships between plants and environment and to quantify a wide range of natural and human-driven processes, including changes in biodiversity, the impacts of species invasions, alterations in biogeochemical processes and vegetation–atmosphere interactions. The importance of these topics dictates the urgent need for more and better data, and increases the value of standardised protocols for quantifying trait variation of different species, in particular for traits with power to predict plant- and ecosystem-level processes, and for traits that can be measured relatively easily. Updated and expanded from the widely used previous version, this handbook retains the focus on clearly presented, widely applicable, step-by-step recipes, with a minimum of text on theory, and not only includes updated methods for the traits previously covered, but also introduces many new protocols for further traits. This new handbook has a better balance between whole-plant traits, leaf traits, root and stem traits and regenerative traits, and puts particular emphasis on traits important for predicting species’ effects on key ecosystem properties. We hope this new handbook becomes a standard companion in local and global efforts to learn about the responses and impacts of different plant species with respect to environmental changes in the present, past and future.

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New handbook for standardised measurement of plant functional traits worldwide

Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear--a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, these pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-sample richness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing marked spatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-sample richness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economically poor countries. Strong mitigation can deliver much more positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status.

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Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity

Summary 1. The leaf economics spectrum (LES) provides a useful framework for examining species strategies as shaped by their evolutionary history. However, that spectrum, as originally described, involved only two key resources (carbon and nutrients) and one of three economically important plant organs. Herein, I evaluate whether the economics spectrum idea can be broadly extended to water – the third key resource –stems, roots and entire plants and to individual, community and ecosystem scales. My overarching hypothesis is that strong selection along trait trade-off axes, in tandem with biophysical constraints, results in convergence for any taxon on a uniformly fast, medium or slow strategy (i.e. rates of resource acquisition and processing) for all organs and all resources. 2. Evidence for economic trait spectra exists for stems and roots as well as leaves, and for traits related to water as well as carbon and nutrients. These apply generally within and across scales (within and across communities, climate zones, biomes and lineages). 3. There are linkages across organs and coupling among resources, resulting in an integrated whole-plant economics spectrum. Species capable of moving water rapidly have low tissue density, short tissue life span and high rates of resource acquisition and flux at organ and individual scales. The reverse is true for species with the slow strategy. Different traits may be important in different conditions, but as being fast in one respect generally requires being fast in others, being fast or slow is a general feature of species. 4. Economic traits influence performance and fitness consistent with trait-based theory about underlying adaptive mechanisms. Traits help explain differences in growth and survival across resource gradients and thus help explain the distribution of species and the assembly of communities across light, water and nutrient gradients. Traits scale up – fast traits are associated with faster rates of ecosystem processes such as decomposition or primary productivity, and slow traits with slow process rates. 5. Synthesis. Traits matter. A single ‘fast–slow’ plant economics spectrum that integrates across leaves, stems and roots is a key feature of the plant universe and helps to explain individual ecological strategies, community assembly processes and the functioning of ecosystems.

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The world‐wide ‘fast–slow’ plant economics spectrum: a traits manifesto

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1365-2745.12806

Global drivers of fine root trait variation: Commentary on Freschet et al. (2017)

This book addresses an important problem in ecology: how are communities assembled from species pools? This pressing question underlies a broad array of practical problems in ecology and environmental science, including restoration of damaged landscapes, management of protected areas, and protection of threatened species. This book presents a simple logical structure for ecological assembly and addresses key areas including species pools, traits, environmental filters, and functional groups. It demonstrates the use of two predictive models (CATS and Traitspace) and consists of many wide-ranging examples including plants in deserts, wetlands, and forests, and communities of fish, amphibians, birds, mammals, and fungi. Global in scope, this volume ranges from the arid lands of North Africa, to forests in the Himalayas, to Amazonian floodplains. There is a strong focus on applications, particularly the twin challenges of conserving biodiversity and understanding community responses to climate change.

A Framework for Community Ecology: Species Pools, Filters, and Traits

Rusby's� milkvetch� ( Astragalus rusbyi Greene) is endemic to basaltic soils northwest and west of Flagstaff, Arizona. Recent interest in this species is due in part to its addition to the U.S. Forest Service Region 3 sensitive spe- cies list in 1999 and its occurrence in ecological restoration projects and proposed fuels reduction projects that in- volve tree thinning and prescribed burning. Some of its habitat has been subjected to large wildfires over the last few decades, and other areas have undergone ecological restoration treatments, while much of its range in ponderosa pine forest is slated to undergo such treatments in the near future. In a ponderosa pine restoration study area northwest of Flagstaff, A. rusbyi was an indicator species of remnant grass patches and increased following tree thinning and pre- scribed burning. However, in an area less than 3 km away, there appeared to be no relationship to restoration treat- ments, trees per ha, pine basal area, or canopy cover, but A. rusbyi did appear to be sensitive to an extreme drought event in 2002 and may have remained dormant in that year, a pattern that has been observed in other rare Astragalus species. A. rusbyi has a foliar nitrogen content of 4.4% and a foliar C:N mass ratio of 11. It is classified as a competi- tive ruderal species, meaning it is able to compete well with other understory species, but is not very tolerant of stresses, such as deep shade. We currently do not have a thorough understanding of the ecology of this species, or the effects of ecological restoration or fuels reduction treatments. In this paper we will discuss ecology of other members of the genus Astragalus and explore the relationships of A. rusbyi to moisture, vegetation treatments and overstory mortality.

Daniel C. Laughlin

Papers

Global drivers of fine root trait variation: Commentary on Freschet et al. (2017)

A Framework for Community Ecology: Species Pools, Filters, and Traits

Ecology of Rusby's Milkvetch ( Astragalus rusbyi), a Rare Endemic of Northern Arizona Ponderosa Pine Forests