The global distribution of grass functional traits within grassy biomes

Aim: The sorting of functional traits along environmental gradients is an important driver of community and landscape scale patterns of functional diversity. However, the significance of environmental factors in driving functional gradients within biomes and across continents remains poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the relationship of soil nutrients and climate to leaf traits in grasses (Poaceae) that are hypothesised to reflect different strategies of resource-use along gradients of resource availability.

Location: Global

Taxon: Poaceae

Methods: We made direct measurements on herbarium specimens to compile a global dataset of functional traits and realised environmental niche for 279 grass species that are common in grassland and savanna biomes. We examined the strength and direction of correlations between pairwise trait combinations and measured the distribution of traits in relation to gradients of soil properties and climate, while accounting for phylogenetic relatedn...