Biology subjects

Denelle, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Denelle, P..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

GIFT an R package to access the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits

O_LIAdvancing knowledge of biodiversity requires open-access global databases and workflows. This appears particularly crucial for plants, as ongoing changes pose major threats to this central group of organisms. Having large-scale information on plant distributions, functional traits and evolutionary history will enable the scientific community to improve its understanding of the patterns and drivers of plant diversity on a global scale. C_LIO_LIThe Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT) is a global database of regional plant checklists that has proven successful in documenting biogeographical and geographical patterns of plants. Since the release of the first version of GIFT, the database kept on expanding. We introduce GIFT version 3.0, which contains 5,169 checklists referring to 3,400 regions. These checklists include a total of 371,148 land plant species, mostly vascular plants, of which 354,848 are accepted species names, and 109 functional traits. This new version uses new resources for taxonomic name standardization, is matched to a new plant phylogeny, comes with a new trait aggregation workflow, and includes additional environmental variables. C_LIO_LIWe also present the GIFT R-package, which contains all necessary functions to retrieve distributional, functional, phylogenetic, and environmental data from the GIFT database. The package comes with a dedicated website, https://biogeomacro.github.io/GIFT/, which includes three rich vignettes to guide users in retrieving data from GIFT. C_LIO_LIThe recent development of GIFT and its associated R-package provide ecologists with access to one of the largest plant databases. This will foster research into regional to global patterns of plant diversity and their underlying mechanisms. Proper versioning of the database and the ability to retrieve and cite data from any previous and current instance of the GIFT database will ensure the reproducibility of studies that utilize it. C_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2023

The contribution of plant life and growth forms to global gradients of vascular plant diversity

Plant life and growth forms (shortened to plant forms) represent key functional strategies of plants in relation to their environment and provide important insights into the ecological constraints acting on the distribution of biodiversity. Despite their ecological importance, how the spectra of plant forms contribute to global gradients of plant diversity is unresolved. Using a novel dataset comprising >295,000 species, we quantify the contribution of different plant forms to global gradients of vascular plant diversity. Further, we establish how plant form distributions in different biogeographical regions are associated with contemporary and paleoclimate conditions, environmental heterogeneity, and phylogeny. We find a major shift in representation by woody perennials in tropical latitudes to herb-dominated floras in temperate and boreal regions, following a sharp latitudinal gradient in plant form diversity from the tropics to the poles. We also find significant functional differences between regions, mirroring life and growth form responses to environmental conditions, which is mostly explained by contemporary climate (18-87%), and phylogeny (6-62%), with paleoclimate and heterogeneity playing only a minor role (<23%). This research highlights variation in the importance of different plant forms to diversity gradients worldwide, providing a much-needed quantification for long-standing ideas and concepts structuring plant assemblages.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Machine learning improves global models of plant diversity

Despite the paramount role of plant diversity for ecosystem functioning, biogeochemical cycles, and human welfare, knowledge of its global distribution is incomplete, hampering basic research and biodiversity conservation. Here, we used machine learning (random forests, extreme gradient boosting, neural networks) and conventional statistical methods (generalised linear models, generalised additive models) to model species richness and phylogenetic richness of vascular plants worldwide based on 830 regional plant inventories including c. 300,000 species and predictors of past and present environmental conditions. Machine learning showed an outstanding performance, explaining up to 80.9% of species richness and 83.3% of phylogenetic richness. Current climate and environmental heterogeneity emerged as the primary drivers, while past environmental conditions left only small but detectable imprints on plant diversity. Finally, we combined predictions from multiple modelling techniques (ensemble predictions) to reveal global patterns and centres of plant diversity at multiple resolutions down to 7,774 km2. Our predictive maps provide the most accurate estimates of global plant diversity available to date at grain sizes relevant for conservation and macroecology.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Assembly of functional diversity in an oceanic island flora

Oceanic island floras are well-known for their morphological peculiarities and exhibit striking examples of trait evolution1,2. These morphological shifts are commonly attributed to insularity and thought to be shaped by biogeographical processes and evolutionary histories of oceanic islands1,3. However, the mechanisms through which biogeography and evolution have shaped the distribution and diversity of plant functional traits remain unclear. Here, we describe the functional trait space of an oceanic island flora (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain) using extensive field and laboratory measurements, and relate it to global trade-offs in ecological strategies. We find that the island trait space is concentrated around a functional hotspot dominated by shrubs with a conservative life-history strategy. By dividing the island flora into species groups with distinct biogeographical distributions and diversification histories, our results reveal that long-distance dispersal, and the interplay between inter-island dispersal and archipelago-level speciation processes drive functional divergence and expand trait space. Conversely, speciation via cladogenesis has overall led to functional convergence, densely packing trait space around shrubbiness. Our approach combines ecology, biogeography and evolution and opens avenues for new trait-based insights into how dispersal and speciation shape the assembly of native island floras.

ecology↗