In this post Reviews Editor, Jason Fridley, highlights papers from the third Grime Reviews series that honors the intellectual contributions of ecologist J. Philip (Phil) Grime and how they continue to inform our understanding of ecosystems, from trait-based adaptive evolution to food web dynamics and beyond:
In Differences in trait-environment relationships: implications for community weighted means tests (2023), Lepš and de Bello critically evaluate different statistical methods for linking plant functional traits to environmental gradients, arguing for a pluralistic perspective in the use of traits to understand community assembly. In Ecological strategies of microbes: thinking outside the triangle (2023), Treseder applies Grime’s competitive-stress tolerance-ruderal (CSR) theory to microbes, and concludes that microbial resource-use strategies may be more diverse than those of plants, with important ramifications for global change studies. In Phylogenetically conservative trait correlation: quantification and interpretation (2023), Westoby and coauthors argue that statistical approaches that include reciprocal causal relationships between traits, and traits and habitats, may better reflect how traits evolve and thus our interpretation of trait-environment correlations. And in Plant defences as functional traits: a comparison across savannahs differing in herbivore specialization, Massad reviews the evolution of defence traits across savannas in Africa and South America that vary in the intensity of mammalian herbivory, suggesting defensive strategies are more diverse than is often assumed in CSR theory.
These reviews are a testament to the breadth of Grime’s impact, laying the groundwork of plant functional ecology that continues to dominate research approaches for understanding ecological assembly rules, plant strategy theory, ecosystem responses to climate change, and many other topics. In an accompanying commentary piece, Perspectives on the scientific legacy of J. Philip Grime (2023), senior plant ecologists from all over the world give personal testimonies to Grime’s impact on ecological and evolutionary science. Like the above reviews, the personal commentaries are wide-ranging and forward-looking, with different opinions as to which of Grime’s theories will stand the test of time in a science increasingly driven by big data and concerns over global sustainability. Together, we hope these reviews give readers a greater appreciation of how key ideas in plant ecology have evolved in the global change era, as well as opportunities for continued innovation in plant functional theory.
A few more forthcoming papers will be added to series 3 over the next few months. And stay tuned for Grime Reviews series 4 in 2024: How do species distribution models reflect and inform ecological processes?
