TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schellenberger Costa, David
A1  - Classen, Alice
A1  - Ferger, Stefan
A1  - Helbig-Bonitz, Maria
A1  - Peters, Marcell K.
A1  - Böhning-Gaese, Katrin
A1  - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf
A1  - Kleyer, Michael
T1  - Relationships between abiotic environment, plant functional traits, and animal body size at Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
T2  - PLoS one
N2  - The effect-response framework states that plant functional traits link the abiotic environment to ecosystem functioning. One ecosystem property is the body size of the animals living in the system, which is assumed to depend on temperature or resource availability, among others. For primary consumers, resource availability may directly be related to plant traits, while for secondary consumers the relationship is indirect. We used plant traits to describe resource availability along an elevational gradient on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Using structural equation models, we determined the response of plant traits to changes in precipitation, temperature and disturbance with and assessed whether abiotic conditions or community-weighted means of plant traits are stronger predictors of the mean size of bees, moths, frugivorous birds, and insectivorous birds. Traits indicating tissue density and nutrient content strongly responded to variations in precipitation, temperature and disturbance. They had direct effects on pollination and fruit traits. However, the average body sizes of the animal groups considered could only be explained by temperature and habitat structure, not by plant traits. Our results demonstrate a strong link between traits and the abiotic environment, but suggest that temperature is the most relevant predictor of mean animal body size. Community-weighted means of plant traits and body sizes appear unsuitable to capture the complexity of plant-animal interactions.
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/43124
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-431240
SN  - 1932-6203
N1  - Copyright: © 2017 Schellenberger Costa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
VL  - 12
IS  - (3): e0174157
SP  - 1
EP  - 15
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -