Media release
Strict embargo 04:00 am AEST Thursday 24th Dec 2015
Plant species possibilities: the plant kingdom’s diversity
secrets divulged
Do existing plant species represent all theoretically possible combinations of structure and
function? To answer this question a team from 14 countries analyzed functional traits across
46,000 species worldwide, the most comprehensive data set ever compiled.
Their research released this week in Nature found that physical and chemical properties of
stems and leaves and seeds combine with each other in surprisingly restricted ways. The
possibilities vary in six dimensions (one per plant trait), but the volume actually occupied is
quite small and flat compared to if traits varied independently. Three quarters of the scatter
in these six dimensions is concentrated into a two-dimensional plane. Variation across this
plane expresses the size of whole plants and their parts, and also the quality of
photosynthetic leaf area, running from cheap, fragile, quick-return material to leaf area that is
expensively-built and lasts longer in face of drought and herbivory.
“The species that now live on Earth are today’s winners. If one did the same exercise with
plants from the distant past, it would have looked pretty different. It would be fascinating to
ask how future land-use and climate change might further filter the Earth’s plant trait-space”
says lead author Sandra Díaz.
The search for simple, recurrent patterns of plant specialization has been active throughout
the 20th century. “It is only now we can test these ideas at the level of the whole plant and at
the global scale” says Jens Kattge. Mark Westoby from Macquarie University comments
“This paper, and the collaborative TRY database that it’s drawn from, represent a really
important consolidation. Both paper and database have been developing over nearly ten
years. For me it was particularly interesting to see how much wider was the spread of
strategies in angiosperms compared to gymnosperms.”
Hans Cornelissen says: “We can now see how any particular species compares functionally
with the rest of the plant world. It’s striking that the genetics pet species Arabidopsis thaliana
is on the fringe, very far from being typical of the world’s flora”. Macquarie University
researcher Ian Wright adds “One important application will be to help us understand
ecological aspects of plant evolution from the deep past to the present and future. Another
application will be more realistic representation of plant diversity in global vegetation models
used to investigate the effects of changing climate and land-use on the world’s ecosystems”.
Díaz et al. (2015) The global spectrum of plant form and function. Nature 23 Dec 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16489. (link becomes live at time embargo lifted)
Full author list (participants currently at Macquarie highlighted): S Díaz, J Kattge, JHC
Cornelissen, IJ Wright, S Lavorel, S Dray, B Reu, M Kleyer, C Wirth, IC Prentice, E Garnier,
G Bönisch, M Westoby, H Poorter, PB Reich, AT Moles, J Dickie, AN Gillison, AE Zanne, J
Chave, SJ Wright, SN Sheremet’ev, H Jactel, C Baraloto, B Cerabolini, S Pierce, B Shipley,
D Kirkup, F Casanoves, JS Joswig, A Günther, V Falczuk, N Rüger, MD Mahecha, LD
Gorné.
CONTACTS IN AUSTRALIA AND FURTHER INFORMATION
Ian Wright is Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie
University. Email: [email protected], phone 0432711003..
Mark Westoby is Distinguished Prof and ARC Laureate Fellow in the Dept of Biological
Sciences at Macquarie University, Sydney, and leader of the Genes to Geoscience
Research Centre. ([email protected], +61 (0)406 094 674)
Sandra Díaz is the director of Núcleo DiverSus at Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología
Vegetal (IMBIV), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina; email:
[email protected]; phone +54(9)3516784561.
The collaborative TRY Initiative database (www.try-db.org) is coordinated by Jens Kattge,
and hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Jena) and the German Centre
for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv).