Speaker
Description
Herbaceous dominated ecosystems – including grasslands, savannas, and shrublands — cover almost half of earth’s terrestrial land surface and play a key role in carbon sequestration. Understanding how they maintain productivity under environmental stress is crucial for climate mitigation. Recent evidence from forests suggests that conservative species outperform fast-growing ones under stressful, resource-limited conditions. Yet it remains unclear if these patterns hold in herbaceous ecosystems, or which traits best predict productivity under environmental constraints. Plant trait-based frameworks often have low predictive power, likely due to the neglect of belowground traits that underpin plant persistence (long-term survival) and resource uptake strategies, and limited insights into how the strength and direction of trait-functioning relationships vary with environmental constraints. Here we show, using global research networks and a novel belowground trait database, that fine root traits, root system extent, and resprouting & clonality strongly predict aboveground biomass production. Specifically, conservative traits and belowground resprouting sustain biomass production in hot and arid environments. These findings challenge assumptions that fast-growing traits universally enhance productivity and highlight that incorporating a broader suite of belowground traits significantly improves predictions of ecosystem functioning especially in stressful environments. We conclude that conservation and restoration efforts should prioritize belowground functional traits to enhance resilience, particularly as droughts intensify in a warming world.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| Poster Presentation Option | Yes, I’m willing to present as a poster. |
