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Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key question is to what extent community-level trait composition is globally filtered and how well it is related to global versus local environmental drivers. Here, we perform a global, plot-level analysis of trait-environment relationships, using a database with more than 1.1 million vegetation plots and 26,632 plant species with trait information. Although we found a strong filtering of 17 functional traits, similar climate and soil conditions support communities differing greatly in mean trait values. The two main community trait axes that capture half of the global trait variation (plant stature and resource acquisitiveness) reflect the trade-offs at the species level but are weakly associated with climate and soil conditions at the global scale. Similarly, within-plot trait variation does not vary systematically with macro-environment. Our results indicate that, at fine spatial grain, macro-environmental drivers are much less important for functional trait composition than has been assumed from floristic analyses restricted to co-occurrence in large grid cells. Instead, trait combinations seem to be predominantly filtered by local-scale factors such as disturbance, fine-scale soil conditions, niche partitioning and biotic interactions.

A general understanding of grazing effects on plant diversity in drylands is still missing, despite an extensive theoretical background. Cross-biome syntheses are hindered by the fact that the outcomes of disturbance studies are strongly affected by the choice of diversity measures, and the spatial and temporal scales of measurements. The aim of this study is to overcome these weaknesses by applying a wide range of diversity measures to a data set derived from identical sampling in three distinct ecosystems. We analyzed three fence-line contrasts (heavier vs. lighter grazing intensity), representing different degrees of aridity (from arid to semiarid) and precipitation regimes (summer rain vs. winter rain) in southern Africa. We tested the impact of grazing intensity on multiple aspects of plant diversity (species and functional group level, richness and evenness components, alpha and beta diversity, and composition) at two spatial scales, and for both 5-yr means and interannual variability. Heavier grazing reduced total plant cover and substantially altered the species and functional composition at all sites. However, a significant decrease in species alpha diversity was detected at only one of the three sites. By contrast, alpha diversity of plant functional groups responded consistently across ecosystems and scales, with a significant decrease at heavier grazing intensity. The cover-based measures of functional group diversity responded more sensitively and more consistently than functional group richness. Beta diversity of species and functional types increased under heavier grazing, showing that at larger scales, the heterogeneity of the community composition and the functional structure were increased. Heavier grazing mostly increased interannual variability of alpha diversity, while effects on beta diversity and cover were inconsistent. Our results suggest that species diversity alone may not adequately reflect the shifts in vegetation structure that occur in response to increased grazing intensity in the dryland biomes of southern Africa. Compositional and structural changes of the vegetation are better reflected by trait-based diversity measures. In particular, measures of plant functional diversity that include evenness represent a promising tool to detect and quantify disturbance effects on ecosystems.