In search of the links between decomposition ecology and evolution: the Arabidopsis connection

PÉREZ HARGUINDEGUY, NATALIA; GORNÉ, LUCAS D.

NEW PHYTOLOGIST

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2019 vol. 224 p. 1409 - 1411

0028-646X

This article is a Commentary on Kazakou et al., 224 : 1532?1543.Starting in the 1970s, plant community ecology was significantlytransformed from a descriptive to a predictive science, particularlydue to the development of assembly rules for plant species (Keddy,1992;i.e.rules thatspecifiedwhichsubsetofspeciesfromtheregionalpool would tolerate specific conditions and form a community). Anunexpected outfall of this transition was that researchers working inplant community ecology somehow lost interest in intraspecificvariation to focus almost exclusively on interspecific differencesbetween co-occurring species (Violle et al., 2012). With the rise ofplant functional ecology, which links the conceptual frameworks ofcommunity and ecosystem ecology, the emphasis on interspecificdifferences deepened. Almost 20 yr later, however, studies haveshown how variation within species may also feedback on communities and ecosystems as part of evolutionary processes operating atecological scales (https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/71845-simone-des-roches/posts/26332-how-variation-within-specieslinks-ecology-and-evolution). This recent evidence has revivedinterest in intraspecific variability as part of the links betweenenvironment, evolution, communities and ecosystems (Violleet al., 2012). However, in spite of the relevance of those links forsome of the core assumptions on which plant functional ecology isbuilt (Calow, 1987), we still understand relatively little about theevolutionary mechanisms behind them.