Showing papers by "Peter J. Grubb published in 2016"
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that statistically significant and ecologically important negative correlations between features A and B in the ‘trend line’ type of plot can be accompanied by huge variation from the trend line, and that authors have not always tested sufficiently rigorously the constraint lines concerning combinations of supposedly incompatible tolerances.
Abstract: Comparative studies on plant species have not distinguished between two inherently different applications of the idea of a trade-off. In the first case, the theoretical trade-off between two variables leads to a trend line, about which there is a degree of scatter. Any two species in the study are expected, in theory, to show a true trade-off, i.e. feature A must decrease for feature B to increase. This I call the ‘trend line’ type of plot. In the second case, the species are expected to fill a considerable part of the space defined by two axes and the theoretical trade-off leads to a boundary line which limits the extent of the cloud of points. In this case, many interspecific comparisons are not expected to show evidence of a trade-off, but those on the boundary line are expected to do so. This I call the ‘boundary line’ type of plot. In both types of plot, species within a given clade may show a true trade-off, while large numbers of unrelated species do not.First, I undertake to show, by means of exam...
66 citations