Human land-use legacies have long-term effects on plant community composition and ecosystem function. While ancient and historical land use is known to affect biodiversity patterns, it is unknown whether such legacies affect other plant community properties such as the diversity of functional traits. Functional traits are a critical tool for understanding ecological communities because they give insights into community assembly processes as well as potential species interactions and other ecosystem functions. Here, we present the first systematic study evaluating how plant functional trait distributions and functional diversity are affected by ancient and historical Indigenous forest management in the Pacific Northwest. We compare forest garden ecosystems - managed perennial fruit and nut communities associated exclusively with archaeological village sites - with surrounding periphery conifer forests. We find that forest gardens have substantially greater plant and functional trait diversity than periphery forests even more than 150 years after management ceased. Forests managed by Indigenous peoples in the past now provide diverse resources and habitat for animals and other pollinators and are more rich than naturally forested ecosystems. Although ecological studies rarely incorporate Indigenous land-use legacies, the positive effects of Indigenous land use on contemporary functional and taxonomic diversity that we observe provide some of the strongest evidence yet that Indigenous management practices are tied to ecosystem health and resilience.

中文翻译：

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历史土著土地利用解释了植物功能性状的多样性

人类土地利用的遗产对植物群落组成和生态系统功能具有长期影响。虽然已知古代和历史土地的使用会影响生物多样性的格局，但尚不清楚这些遗产是否会影响其他植物群落的特性，例如功能性状的多样性。功能性状是理解生态群落的重要工具，因为它们可以洞察群落组装过程以及潜在的物种相互作用和其他生态系统功能。在这里，我们进行了第一个系统研究，评估了西北太平洋地区古代和历史性土著森林管理如何影响植物功能性状分布和功能多样性。我们将森林花园生态系统（仅与考古村遗址相关联的常年管理的水果和坚果群落）与周围的针叶林进行了比较。我们发现，即使在管理停止后150多年，森林花园的植物和功能性状多样性也比周围的森林大得多。过去，由土著人民管理的森林现在为动物和其他授粉媒介提供了多种资源和栖息地，并且比天然森林生态系统更加丰富。尽管生态学研究很少包含土著土地利用的遗产，但我们观察到的土著土地利用对当代功能和生物分类多样性的积极影响提供了一些最有力的证据，表明土著管理实践与生态系统的健康和复原力息息相关。