Figure 1.
Hypothesized phylogenetic relationships and trait values for 76 plant species growing in Alberta grasslands.
Symbols indicate relative values for species habitat associations (NMDS axis 1 score) and the total (), within-community (α), and among-community (β) components of leaf size variation (all values centered and scaled for visual comparison purposes). Branches are scaled proportional to estimated divergence times, with the root node (monocot – eudicot divergence) estimated at 139 million years ago.
Figure 2.
Trait gradient analysis of leaf size for 76 plant species growing in Alberta grasslands.
Gray symbols are leaf size measured on 432 individual plants in 27 communities. Plants are arranged in order of increasing community mean leaf size (dashed line). Black symbols indicate leaf size of individual plants (circles) and the mean within-community (α) and among-community (β) leaf size (square) for Galium boreale. Dotted lines indicate mean leaf size of Galium boreale relative to co-occurring species (α = −0.8) and along the community mean leaf size gradient (β = 0.4), which sum to determine the mean or total leaf size observed for this species ( = 0.4). The solid line indicates the slope of within-species variation in leaf size in Galium boreale along the community trait gradient (bs).
Figure 3.
Results of a non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination for 27 communities in mixedgrass and fescue grasslands in Alberta.
Solid symbols indicate the site and habitat type of individual communities (green = fescue site, blue = mixedgrass sites). Cross symbols indicate species scores; names of selected species are indicated in gray. The first axis of this ordination was used as a measure of the habitat affinity of species.
Table 1.
Summary of trait-environment correlations and trait variation patterns for plant communities in mixedgrass and fescue grasslands in Alberta.
Figure 4.
Correlations between phylogenetically independent contrasts of total (), within-community (α), and among-community (β) components of trait variation for specific leaf area (SLA; cm2/g) versus specific root length (SRL; m/g).
Dashed lines indicate estimated evolutionary correlation through the origin.
Table 2.
Summary of ahistorical and phylogenetically independent contrast (PIC) correlations among A) within-community (α), B) among-community (β) and C) total () components of trait variation for 76 plant species (68 contrasts) in Alberta grasslands.
Table 3.
Phylogenetic signal in within-community (α), among-community (β) and total () components of trait variation for 76 plant species in Alberta grasslands.