Honorary Members - International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS)

Honorary Members

Honorary Membership is the highest award the IAVS can bestow on an individual member to recognize sustained contributions of extraordinary merit to the Association or to the field of Vegetation Science. The award was established in 1988 and is awarded at approximately two-year intervals.

2023: Martin Zobel

Estonia; 25 February 1957 –

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2020: Valério Pillar

Brazil; 1 February 1959 –

The quest for explanations of trait-divergence patterns in plant communities

Abstract:

Plant community ecologists search for trait-based patterns of species assembled in communities, and try to predict vegetation responses to driving factors as well as the effects of the communities on ecosystem functions and across trophic levels. Beyond prediction, questions often arise about explanations for the patterns or about mechanisms that are structuring plant communities. Environmental filtering leading to trait convergence has been the most robust explanation for community assembly. But, why communities with so many species showing distinctive functional traits are often found under similar environmental conditions? In this talk, I focus on the search for explanations of trait-divergence patterns in plant communities. I discuss the conditions leading to trait-divergence, which I show can arise from environmental filtering. In community assembly, the units filtered by the factors are whole organisms with traits which cannot be physically separated and are not independent each other. Thus, the selection effect by an environmental factor on an individual based on a given trait may depend on how other traits in the same individual are filtered by the same or by the other factors. Further, environmental factors may interact each other in their selection effects, which is the rule in nature, and there are factors that are hidden, not observable, such as when related to unknown past conditions or affecting community assembly at a finer resolution than the studied grain size. I examine these problems by examples and by showing power analyses using metacommunity data generated by a stochastic, individual-based, spatially explicit model following specified environmental filtering parameters, factor interactions and trait correlations. For the analysis, fuzzy-weighting, Beals transformation and community weighted means are combined to measure beta trait divergence. The evidence indicates that trait divergence can be generated in community assembly by the interacting effects of factors in the selection of individuals based on their traits.

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2018: Ladislav Mucina

Australia; 28 May 1956 –

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2016: Robert K. Peet

United States of America; 14 February 1947 –

IAVS and Data for Vegetation Science: Past, Present and Future

Presentation details

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2014: Kazue Fujiwara

Japan

Abstract:

What types of forest are drier? There are many types of drier forest in the Northern Hemisphere, including warm-temperate deciduous forests and monsoon forests. These forests are unique regionally. In particular, warm-temperate deciduous forests (WTDF), especially deciduous Quercus forests, occur in Asia, Europe and eastern North America (Box & Fujiwara 2014). Quercus species differ in the WTDF, typical temperate forests (TTF) and cool-temperate forests (CTF) of different regions. WTDF are drier (on an annual basis) because winters are warmer than in temperate and cool-temperate forests; WTDF have colder winters than warm-temperate evergreen forests. Sometimes, however, the forest type is related to substrate, especially in Mediterranean areas and eastern North America. Values for the annual Moisture Index (MI = P/PET) are 0.7–1.9 for WTF in Asia, 1.0 (0.68)–1.45 in eastern North America and 0.66–1.35 in Europe. Asia has the widest range, from insular Japan to mainland China and Korea. Moisture Index values for WTDF are relatively lower than for TTF and CTF, and higher than for evergreen broad-leaved forests in Europe. Moisture Index values of WTDF in eastern North America are similar to values for warm-temperate evergreen broad-leaved forests in general. Similar tropical dry forest types include monsoon dry dipterocarp forests in Southeast Asia and dry tropical forests in Kenya. These forests are relatively simple but expand into evergreen broad-leaved forest areas as secondary forests. WTDF expand also, into typical-temperate areas as secondary forests after disturbance. Then the number of species increases in the tree and herb layers, especially in Asian forests. Another characteristic is that WTDF around lakes already show vegetation shifts under global warming. The lowest winter temperatures increase, permitting the germination and growth of evergreen broad-leaved species. This phenomenon was called “laurophyllization” (Kloetzli & Walther 1999) and can also be seen in Asia (Fujiwara & Box 1999; Fujiwara & Harada 2014), as well as in southern Europe. This is not seen at drier sites.

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2012: J. Bastow Wilson

New Zealand; 10 October 1944 – 2015

Abstract:

Theories have never fared well in vegetation science. The Clements/Gleason theory (for their theories were almost identical) is the basis of three major ecological concepts: (1) Environmental filtering: its operation is, as Warming said, "trivial", though it has always been documented and continues to be, with a few brave attempts to find deeper meanings. (2) Switches: they seem likely to be pervasive in natural communities, but evidence for them is sparse. (3) Assembly rules (present in Clements/Gleason theory only as a single aside by Clements): these are essentially micro- scale switches; evidence for them is easy to obtain, but valid evidence much less easy. The elephant in the room is C-S-R theory, testable but hardly tested.

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2010: John Rodwell

England; 3 July 1946 –

Abstract:

The UK National Vegetation Classification has made a great difference to the way in which all manner of environmental professionals do business with the natural world, as well as illuminating the spectrum of scepticism, uncertainty and trust with which practitioners and customers variously regard science. Results from some of its many applications also reveal attitudes and practices that subvert the benefits of ecological research. On the one hand, spurious notions of the ‘wild’ minimise legitimate cultural claims to relationships with place while much conservation and landscape planning works to obliterate the fuzziness and dynamism of green infrastructure and creative interactions between nature and humankind. The policy frames to which many of us now work also exert a particular twist, imposing unrealistic targets for landscape management and inflexible measures of environmental condition. For some, the ethical implications of ecological endeavour are not a legitimate part of our professional integrity, yet the notion of ecosystem services, widely welcomed, presses such moral decisions upon us – or provides an opportunity for negotiating a more imaginative relationship to the natural world. Ecology has a place in relating environmental value and condition to human well-being in ways that neither enslave the natural nor fail to liberate human resourcefulness to find its place in a sustainable world among other creatures.

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