Plants
Up to Group discussions
--- reposted from emails---
The Lavorel et al paper brings up many of the important issues we
should be thinking about -- and takes the approach that the functional
classifications should be constructed to answer a question about a
particular process: e.g. the disturbance of drought or grazing on
grassland plant communities. A question for us: should we just keep the
broadest possible classification, since we want to consider multiple
ecosystem processes? Or should we try to take advantage of other work
on specific traits, like the photosynthesis-leaf thickness-leaf
longevity correlations which we can use to locate plants a continuum
from pioneer to later successional plants?
-Dan
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Bárbara Tadzia Richers wrote:
I would like
to share with you an interesting paper (Lavorel et al. 1997),
probably you already know it, but I found it very useful to our
discussion about how we could define our plants functional groups.
They first discuss about four different manners of classifying plants
into FG and they also propose a hierarchical approach to do that, which
seems interesting. I would like to know what do you think about this
hierarchical approach.
I have
attached the article and a word document where you can find the most
important information about each of the four classifications forms they
mentioned and at the last paragraph (with bold letters) you will find
what they said about the hierarchical approach. At the end, there is
also some information about classifications made by other works.
Also, yesterday we talked about how classification schemes for animals are likely to be much broader than for plants -- so that we might want to make the plant classifications just as broad.
A starter classification:
life form: tree, shrub, herb, vine
if tree: evergreen or deciduous
legume or not
mode of pollination: wind, insect, bird
mode of seed dispersal: wind, insect, mammal...
if known: shade tolerant or not?
... please add / edit this list!
We also began to talk about defining the most important ecosystems services for each taxa evaluated to better define our taxas classifications. Some ideas mentioned about the plant group were: Primary production, Soil nutrient pools, cycling rates (water, nutrients), Carbon fixation and pool.
Which other ES should we add to this beginning list? Are the classifications proposed able to properly differentiate our plants when we think about this ES?
Two thoughts here, do you think that we can use something like the Gillison classification? I a attaching the classification here. The advantage with it is that is can be applied retroactively. The disadvantage is that it is based on morphological traits which may not be directly related to any particular function. It has been used mostly by the folks in the Alternatives to Slash and Burn group and has not been widely adopted by those working on functional diversity for various reasons that I do not know. Its other strength is that it is much more formal than the tree, vine etc... and so would give us a pretty good range of groups. We can always add to it, such as by adding dispersal mechanisms etc...
The second classfication I have come across is one that is being heavily promoted by Larovel et al called LHS, it measures three traits Specific Leaf Area, plant height, and seed size. This is based on work done by Westoby et al 2002. Plant Ecological strategies: Some leading dimesions of variation between species. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 33 125-159
I read about this is a paper by Lavorel that I am reviewing and also noted that they published a paper last year (in a book) on how functional diversity changes with landuse intensity. It might be useful for us and I should have it for us by this afternoon.