Abstract
Tropical forests are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, yet their functioning is threatened by anthropogenic disturbances and climate change. Global actions to conserve tropical forests could be enhanced by having local knowledge on the forestsʼ functional diversity and functional redundancy as proxies for their capacity to respond to global environmental change. Here we create estimates of plant functional diversity and redundancy across the tropics by combining a dataset of 16 morphological, chemical and photosynthetic plant traits sampled from 2,461 individual trees from 74 sites distributed across four continents together with local climate data for the past half century. Our findings suggest a strong link between climate and functional diversity and redundancy with the three trait groups responding similarly across the tropics and climate gradient. We show that drier tropical forests are overall less functionally diverse than wetter forests and that functional redundancy declines with increasing soil water and vapour pressure deficits. Areas with high functional diversity and high functional redundancy tend to better maintain ecosystem functioning, such as aboveground biomass, after extreme weather events. Our predictions suggest that the lower functional diversity and lower functional redundancy of drier tropical forests, in comparison with wetter forests, may leave them more at risk of shifting towards alternative states in face of further declines in water availability across tropical regions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 878-889 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Nature Ecology and Evolution |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Early online date | 16 May 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work is a product of the Global Ecosystems Monitoring (GEM) network ( gem.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk ). J.A.-G. was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; NE/T011084/1) and the Oxford University Jhon Fell Fund (10667). The traits field campaign was funded by a grant to Y.M. from the European Research Council (advanced grant GEM-TRAIT: 321131) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) with additional support from NERC grant NE/D014174/1 and NE/J022616/1 for traits work in Peru, NERC grant ECOFOR (NE/K016385/1) for traits work in Santarem, NERC grant BALI (NE/K016369/1) for plot and traits work in Malaysia and ERC advanced grant T-FORCES (291585) to O.L.P. for traits work in Australia. Plot setup in Ghana and Gabon was funded by a NERC grant NE/I014705/1 and by the Royal Society-Leverhulme Africa Capacity Building Programme. The Malaysia campaign was also funded by NERC grant NE/K016253/1. Plot inventories in Peru were supported by funding from the US National Science Foundation Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology program (LTREB; DEB 1754647) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Andes–Amazon Program. Plots inventories in Nova Xavantina (Brazil) were supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Long Term Ecological Research Program (PELD), process 441244/2016–5 and the Foundation of Research Support of Mato Grosso (FAPEMAT), Project ReFlor, process 589267/2016. During data collection, I.O.M. was supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF-327990). GEM trait data in Gabon were supported by the Gabon National Parks Agency. D.B. was funded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement number 895799. W.D.K. acknowledges funding from the University of Amsterdam via a starting grant and through the Faculty Research Cluster ‘Global Ecology’. S.A.-B. acknowledges funding from The Leverhulme Trust—Royal Society of the United Kingdom (A130026) under the Water Stress, Ecosystem Function and tree FD in tropical African forests project. C.A.J. acknowledges support from the Brazilian National Research Council/CNPq (PELD process 403710/2012–0), NERC and the State of São Paulo Research Foundation/FAPESP as part of the projects Functional Gradient, PELD/BIOTA and ECOFOR (processes 2003/12595-7, 2012/51509-8 and 2012/51872-5, within the BIOTA/FAPESP Program—The Biodiversity Virtual Institute ( www.biota.org.br ); COTEC/IF 002.766/2013 and 010.631/2013 permits. B.S.M. was supported by the CNPq/PELD projects (number 441244/2016-5 and number 441572/2020-0) and CAPES (number 136277/2017-0). D.F.R.P.B. thanks the financial support from NERC (NE/K016253/1) for trait data collection in Sabah Malaysia. M.S. acknowledges funding for Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG) plot network from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) 1754647, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Andes to Amazon Initiative and RAINFOR. E.B, J.B. and Y.M. acknowledge the support from NERC under projects NE/K016431/1 and NE/S01084X/1. R.M.E. acknowledges support from the Sime Darby Foundation. Measurements and analysis include support from NERC (‘AMAZONICAʼ, NE/F005806; ‘BIO-REDʼ, NE/N012542/1; ARBOLES, NE/S011811/1), the Moore Foundation and the AfriTRON and RAINFOR networks. Y.M. is supported by the Jackson Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
