Context Most future predictions of forest diversity and composition assume species will shift instantaneously. However, evidence suggests there will be considerable inertia between climate change and shifts in plant species distributions, for example due to resident communities resisting changes, the redistribution of resident species’ abundances, and dispersal limitation of species attempting to track preferred climates. Objectives To test how inertia in community responses to climate change may affect future primary productivity, and the capacity for communities to respond through local redistribution of abundances. Methods We assessed relationships between community functional trait distributions, climate and environment with a remote-sensed measure of gross primary productivity (GPP) across 1032 woody plant communities and projected these spatially under current and future climates. Using a simulation approach, we also tested the capacity for communities to achieve future trait distributions by shifting the relative abundances of resident species. Results We found that climate change is likely to reduce GPP in southeast Queensland, and, contrary to expectations, there is little evidence to suggest distributional inertia will contribute substantially to this loss. We show that sites with high existing functional diversity are well-placed to achieve predicted future trait compositions in the absence of long-distance dispersal through redistribution of resident species abundances. Conclusions Our results show that sites with high existing functional diversity are well placed to achieve predicted future trait compositions in the absence of long-distance dispersal through abundance redistribution of resident species, but it is unlikely this will mitigate strong climate change-driven losses of productivity.

中文翻译：

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在决定未来总初级生产力方面，直接气候效应比功能构成更有影响力

背景 大多数未来对森林多样性和组成的预测都假设物种会立即发生变化。然而，有证据表明，气候变化和植物物种分布的变化之间存在相当大的惯性，例如由于居民社区抵制变化、居民物种丰度的重新分布以及试图追踪首选气候的物种的传播限制。目标 测试社区应对气候变化的惯性如何影响未来的初级生产力，以及社区通过当地资源再分配做出反应的能力。方法 我们评估了社区功能特征分布之间的关系，通过遥感测量 1032 个木本植物群落的总初级生产力 (GPP) 的气候和环境，并在当前和未来的气候下对这些进行空间预测。使用模拟方法，我们还测试了社区通过改变常驻物种的相对丰度来实现未来性状分布的能力。结果我们发现气候变化可能会降低昆士兰东南部的 GPP，并且与预期相反，几乎没有证据表明分配惯性会对这种损失产生重大影响。我们表明，在没有长距离扩散的情况下，具有高度现有功能多样性的地点可以很好地通过重新分配常驻物种丰度来实现预测的未来性状组成。