Human land use is comparable to climate as a driver of global plant occurrence and abundance across life forms
Date
2023-06-09
Journal Title
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Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
Aim
Historically, climate has been a dominant driver of global vegetation patterns. Recently, ecological understanding has been updated to acknowledge the influence of human land use (the dominant driver of biodiversity change) in shaping global vegetation patterns. We test whether Raunkiær's life form, a plant classification system designed to reflect climatic drivers, affects how plants respond to both land use and climate.
Location
Forty-one countries across six continents.
Time period
1990 to 2013.
Major taxa studied
Terrestrial plants.
Methods
Combining data from the biodiversity and land use database PREDICTS, and plant trait databases TRY and BIEN, we use generalized linear mixed models with weighted effects coding to test whether Raunkiær's life form affects plant response to land use and climate in over 4800 species at over 300 sites globally.
Results
We provide evidence that human land use is comparable to climate in influencing life form occurrence and that land use produces divergent outcomes across life forms.
Main conclusions
Combined with climatic suitability, land use acts as a filter contracting the realized niche of trees and expanding the realized niche of disturbance-tolerant species. Our results highlight the fundamental role of human activity in shaping species' distribution.
Description
Publication history: Accepted - 23 May 2023; Published online - 9 June 2023.
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Keywords
anthropogenic terrestrial disturbance, biogeography, climate, distribution, global change, human land use, macroecology, plant life forms, Raunkiær, vegetation patterns
Citation
McKeon, C.M., Kelly, R., Börger, L., De Palma, A. and Buckley, Y.M. (2023) ‘Human land use is comparable to climate as a driver of global plant occurrence and abundance across life forms’, Global Ecology and Biogeography. Wiley. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13713.