HISTORY SUPPLEMENTS CURRENT ENVIRONMENT IN DRIVING FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY PATTERNS (Invited Presentation)

Functional diversity is an essential aspect of biodiversity, determining environmental responses and ecological impact. While it is evident that species diversity is co-determined by contemporary drivers and historical dynamics, the importance of the latter for functional diversity remains little explored. Here, I synthesise new work on the relative importance of historical and contemporary drivers for functional diversity for plants, covering cross continental comparisons, and a range of historical drivers. The results I present here show how Quaternary-scale climate influences broad-scale patterns in assemblage trait means and that high variability and distance to stable areas is associated with reduced functional diversity, with links also to deeper-time climate. Further, I show how non-climatic regional effects, consistent with a strong role of regional historical idiosyncrasies. The work I present here demonstrates that functional diversity patterns cannot be fully understood from contemporary drivers, but also reflect long-term dynamics, with significant implications for responses to anthropogenic global change.