Editorial article: Functional signatures, epizoochory, mapping from satellites and Editors? Award

WILSON, JB; WHITE, PS; BAKKER, JP; DÍAZ, S; FRANKLIN, J

APPLIED VEGETATION SCIENCE

Opulus Press

Lugar: Uppsala; Año: 2005 vol. 8 p. 1 - 2

1402-2001

The editors give their award for the 2004 paper in  Applied Vegetation Science that impressed them the  most to Hunt et al. (2004): ?A new practical tool for  deriving a functional signature for herbaceous vegetation?.  Ecology has more difficulty than most sciences  in finding generalities ? and we hardly dare speak of  laws. In recent years hope has been seen through the use  of ecological groups of species ? functional types, guilds,  syndromes, rôles, strategies ? whatever we call them.  The first phase, still continuing, was to identify the  important characters and to define the types of species  and/or the associations of traits (Grime et al. 1997;  Lavorel & Garnier 2002; Lawesson et al. 2003; Pillar &  Sosinski 2003; Diaz et al. 2004). The second phase was  to find correlations with the physical environment (Duru  et al. 2004; Barboni et al. 2004) and with the disturbance  regime (Gondard et al. 2003; Lloret & Vilà 2003; Pausus  & Lavorel 2003). Application of this research to guide  and evaluate management would complete the research  programme (Rusch et al. 2003 and references therein),  and Hunt et al. (2004) are the first to provide a userfriendly,  ready-to-use, automated system to do this. You  put in the species list for your patch of vegetation, the  program calculates its position in the C-S-R triangle,  then it uses this to estimate the degree of eutrophication  of the habitat, and its past disturbance, as well as to  predict the vegetation?s resistance to any future  disturbance and its resilience (i.e. rate of bounce-back)  after a disturbance. Not everyone is convinced that the  C-S-R scheme is the answer to all of vegetation ecology?s  problems. However, Hunt et al. applied their procedure  to the classic Bibury roadside survey (recorded yearly  since 1958), and it revealed a subtle but believable  decrease in fertility and increase in disturbance. Applied  to a survey around Sheffield first made by Phil Grime?s  group in the 1970s and repeated 20 years later, the  can be used with any functional classification under  which the characteristics of the species are known. The  authors just argue for ?an ecological language ... which  classifies species in terms of their ecological characteristics  rather than their evolutionary ancestry?.