Understanding the traits mediating species’ responses to climate change is a cornerstone for predicting future community composition and ecosystem function.
Although species’ eco-physiological properties determine their response to environmental change, most trait-based studies focus on a small subset of easily measured morphological traits as proxies for physiology. This choice may limit our ability to predict the impacts of climate change on species’ demography, and obscure the underlying mechanisms.
We conducted a transplantation experiment along a 1000-m elevation gradient in the Alps to quantify the degree to which changes in plant abundance due to climate warming were predicted by eco-physiological performance versus common morphological traits.