Functional biogeography is the discipline that studies the geographic distribution of organismal traits and their relationships with environmental conditions and ecosystem functioning. Trait multifunctionality can be a major challenge in such analyses, so deciphering trait geographic distributions from functions is not always straightforward. We studied spinescence in the flora of Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a case of a multifunctional trait, associated mainly with antiherbivory defence, aridity alleviation, and propagule and seed dispersal. We studied how the proportion of spiny species in the flora of Israel and the Palestinian Authority and the distribution of different spine locations within the plants vary along a very strong bioclimatic (especially rainfall) gradient in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We found that plant spinescence, as expressed in species proportion, is more frequently positively associated with increasing aridity and summer heat, and more generally with resource limitations. However, spinescence of reproductive plant parts, which in many species aids seed dispersal, presents opposite trends. These patterns reflect the differing importance of each of the three major roles attributed to plant spinescence, and point to the relative importance of each in driving overall spinescence geographic distribution. Thus, the traits’ geographic distribution patterns can elucidate these traits’ multifunctionality and improve our understanding of the evolution and spatial variation among these functions.

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多功能性状的生物地理学：以色列和巴勒斯坦权力机构植物区系中的刺植物物种

功能生物地理学是研究生物体特征的地理分布及其与环境条件和生态系统功能的关系的学科。性状多功能性可能是此类分析中的一个主要挑战，因此从功能中解读性状地理分布并不总是那么简单。我们研究了以色列和巴勒斯坦权力机构植物区系中的刺，将其作为多功能性状的一个例子，主要与反食草防御、缓解干旱以及繁殖和种子传播有关。我们研究了以色列和巴勒斯坦权力机构植物区系中带刺物种的比例以及植物内不同刺位置的分布如何沿着以色列和巴勒斯坦权力机构非常强的生物气候（特别是降雨）梯度变化。我们发现，以物种比例表示的植物刺序更频繁地与干旱和夏季炎热的增加呈正相关，并且更普遍地与资源限制呈正相关。然而，在许多物种中有助于种子传播的生殖植物部分的刺却呈现出相反的趋势。这些模式反映了植物刺丝的三个主要作用中每一个的不同重要性，并指出了每种作用在驱动总体刺丝地理分布中的相对重要性。因此，性状的地理分布模式可以阐明这些性状的多功能性，并提高我们对这些功能之间的演化和空间变异的理解。