An experimental test of CSR theory using a globally calibrated ordination method

Can CSR theory, in conjunction with a recently proposed globally calibrated CSR ordination (“StrateFy”), using only three easily measured leaf traits (leaf area, specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content) predict the functional signature of herbaceous vegetation along experimentally manipulated gradients of soil fertility and disturbance? To determine this, we grew 37 herbaceous species in mixture for five years in 24 experimental mesocosms differing in factorial levels of soil resources (stress) and density-independent mortality (disturbance). We measured 16 different functional traits and then ordinated the resulting vegetation within the CSR triangle using StrateFy. We then calculated community-weighted mean (CWM) values of the competitor (C(CWM)), stress-tolerator (S(CWM)) and ruderal (R(CWM)) scores for each mesocosm. We found a significant increase in S(CWM) from low to high stress mesocosms, and an increase in R(CWM) from lowly to highly disturbed mesocosms. However, C(CWM) did not decline significantly as intensity of stress or disturbance increased, as predicted by CSR theory. This last result likely arose because our herbaceous species were relatively poor competitors in global comparisons and thus no strong competitors in our species pool were selectively favoured in low stress and low disturbed mesocosms. Variation in the 13 other traits, not used by StrateFy, largely argeed with the predictions of CSR theory. StrateFy worked surprisingly well in our experimental study except for the C-dimension. Despite loss of some precision, it has great potential applicability in future studies due to its simplicity and generality.