[OANNES Foro] Functional traits of marine macrophytes predict primary production

[Mario Cabrejos]

Functional Ecology 

First published: 28 November 2016 

DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.12798  


 


Functional traits of marine macrophytes predict primary production


·         Holger Jänes, Jonne Kotta, Merli Pärnoja, Tasman P. Crowe, Fabio
Rindi, Helen Orav-Kotta


 


SUMMARY


0.      

·         1. The relationship between community structure and the
functioning of ecosystems is the subject of ongoing debate. Biological or
functional trait-based approaches that capture life strategy, morphology and
behavioural characteristics have received far less attention than taxonomic
diversity in this context, despite their more intuitive link to ecosystem
functioning.

·          

2.    Macrophyte primary production underpins aquatic food webs, regulates
benthic and pelagic ecosystems and is a key aspect of the global carbon
cycle. This study spans a range of aquatic biomes across Europe and aims to
examine potential for predicting primary production of macrophyte
communities based on the functional traits of species and identify the
traits that are the most informative indicators of macrophyte production.

3.    Macrophyte primary production was assessed based on the oxygen
production of the whole community, linked to biomasses of selected
biological traits derived of its component species and analysed using the
novel boosted regression trees modelling technique.

4.    Results showed that functional traits derived from macrophyte
community data explained most of the variation in primary production of
macrophyte communities without the need to incorporate environmental data on
the habitats. Macrophyte primary production was influenced by a combination
of tolerance, morphology and life habit traits; however tolerance traits
contributed most of variability in macrophyte primary production when all
traits were analysed jointly.

5.    This study also showed the existence of trait clustering as the
studied trait categories were not fully independent; strong interlinkages
between and within trait categories emerged.

6.    Our study suggests that functional trait analysis captures different
aspects of ecosystem functioning and thereby enables assessing primary
production of macrophyte communities over geographically distinct areas
without extensive taxonomic and environmental data. This could result in a
novel framework through which a simplification of the general procedure of
production estimations and comparisons across environmental gradients can be
achieved.

 



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