Revisiting the H oly G rail: using plant functional traits to understand ecological processes

JL Funk, JE Larson, GM Ames, BJ Butterfield… - Biological …, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
One of ecology's grand challenges is developing general rules to explain and predict highly
complex systems. Understanding and predicting ecological processes from species' traits …

Pedotransfer functions in Earth system science: Challenges and perspectives

K Van Looy, J Bouma, M Herbst, J Koestel… - Reviews of …, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
Soil, through its various functions, plays a vital role in the Earth's ecosystems and provides
multiple ecosystem services to humanity. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) are simple to …

A multi-species synthesis of physiological mechanisms in drought-induced tree mortality

HD Adams, MJB Zeppel, WRL Anderegg… - Nature ecology & …, 2017 - nature.com
Widespread tree mortality associated with drought has been observed on all forested
continents and global change is expected to exacerbate vegetation vulnerability. Forest …

Theory-guided data science: A new paradigm for scientific discovery from data

A Karpatne, G Atluri, JH Faghmous… - … on knowledge and …, 2017 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
Data science models, although successful in a number of commercial domains, have had
limited applicability in scientific problems involving complex physical phenomena. Theory …

Functional ecology of fish: current approaches and future challenges

S Villéger, S Brosse, M Mouchet, D Mouillot, MJ Vanni - Aquatic Sciences, 2017 - Springer
Fish communities face increasing anthropogenic pressures in freshwater and marine
ecosystems that modify their biodiversity and threaten the services they supply to human …

Tree mortality across biomes is promoted by drought intensity, lower wood density and higher specific leaf area

S Greenwood, P Ruiz‐Benito, J Martínez‐Vilalta… - Ecology …, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
Drought events are increasing globally, and reports of consequent forest mortality are
widespread. However, due to a lack of a quantitative global synthesis, it is still not clear …

A global method for calculating plant CSR ecological strategies applied across biomes world‐wide

S Pierce, D Negreiros, BEL Cerabolini… - Functional …, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
Summary Competitor, stress‐tolerator, ruderal (CSR) theory is a prominent plant functional
strategy scheme previously applied to local floras. Globally, the wide geographic and …

Water potential regulation, stomatal behaviour and hydraulic transport under drought: deconstructing the iso/anisohydric concept

J Martínez‐Vilalta, N Garcia‐Forner - Plant, cell & environment, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
In this review, we address the relationship between stomatal behaviour, water potential
regulation and hydraulic transport in plants, focusing on the implications for the …

Functional trait diversity maximizes ecosystem multifunctionality

N Gross, YL Bagousse-Pinguet, P Liancourt… - Nature ecology & …, 2017 - nature.com
Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been a
core ecological research topic over the past decades. Although a key hypothesis is that the …

A roadmap for improving the representation of photosynthesis in Earth system models

A Rogers, BE Medlyn, JS Dukes, G Bonan… - New …, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
Accurate representation of photosynthesis in terrestrial biosphere models (TBM s) is
essential for robust projections of global change. However, current representations vary …