Assessing the joint behavior of species traits as filtered by environment

Understanding and predicting how species traits are shaped by prevailing environmental conditions is an important yet challenging task in ecology. Functional trait based approaches can replace potentially idiosyncratic species-specific response models in learning about community behavior across environmental gradients. Customarily, models for traits given environment consider only trait means to predict species and functional diversity, as intra-taxon variability in traits is often thought to be negligible. A growing body of literature indicates that intra-taxon trait variability is substantial and critical in structuring plant communities and assessing ecosystem function.
We propose flexible joint trait distribution models given environment and across species that incorporate intra-taxon variability as well as inter-site/plot variability. Using a Bayesian framework, our joint trait distribution models allow for mixed continuous, binary, and ordinal trait variables and incorporate depe...