Functional properties improve predictions of long-term productivity invariability but not resistance to drought.

Abstract

Identifying the factors mediating the resilience and invariability of plant communities and their associated ecosystem functions is critical to understand the ecological impacts of climate change. Prior work has explored how classic "community properties" (characterizing a community by species composition) regulate the resilience and invariability of ecosystem functioning. Mechanistically, community properties influence resilience and invariability via species' traits, and as a result, "functional properties" (characterizing a community via functional traits) might better predict these qualities. For example, functional traits associated with conservative resource-use strategies (e.g., short stature, low specific leaf area [SLA], high leaf dry matter content [LDMC]) are expected to promote both resistance to periods of stress or resource limitation and long-term invariability. While there is a strong conceptual basis linking functional traits and functional diversity to resilience and invariability, empirical evidence is thus far mixed, and sourcing accurate functional trait data may be challenging. Therefore, it is important to know if community properties are sufficient for evaluating the resilience and invariability of ecosystem functioning, or if functional properties provide necessary insights. Capitalizing on a decades-long study, we tested the effects of plant functional and community properties on the resistance of ecosystem functioning (a component of resilience) to drought or long-term invariability. Including functional properties did not improve our ability to explain primary productivity resistance to droughts but considerably improved our explanatory power for productivity invariability. Our results supported expectations that conservative trait strategies promote ecosystem functioning resistance to perturbations and temporal invariability. These findings highlight that the utility of functional properties in explaining the resilience and invariability of ecosystem functioning may depend on the attribute under consideration and that functional properties may primarily be useful for identifying the traits promoting resilience and invariability.