Abstract
As global change forces species’ ranges and abundances into novel
configurations, traits-based approaches could allow predictions of
community re-assembly. We present a quantitative review of traits-based
research globally to (1) evaluate the extent to which this approach has
been applied, and (2) evaluate moving from description and to
prediction. We highlight the application of traits-based frameworks to
describe ecological patterns; terrestrial plant morphology comprises
>30% of the literature alone. But fewer than 3% of
studies predict ecological effects of global change, mostly in the past
five years. While organism size is the most common trait, we identified
2,430 other morphological, physiological, behavioural, and life history
traits that mediate environmental filters of species’ ranges across
ecosystems and taxonomy. Global change studies forecast range shifts
from a few physiological or life history traits. Though uncommon,
spatially-explicit models constructed from correlated multivariate trait
assemblages (or ‘syndromes’) offer the best chance of predicting shifts
under global change scenarios. Moving the field towards trait-based
prediction requires (1) matching the scale of trait measurement to the
ecological processes, (2) increasing the resolution of environmental
gradients along which traits are measured, (3) moving from single to
multivariate traits, and (4) accounting for intraspecific trait
variation.