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Global dominance of lianas over trees is driven by forest disturbance, climate and topography

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Marion PfeiferORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

© 2024 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Growing evidence suggests that liana competition with trees is threatening the global carbon sink by slowing the recovery of forests following disturbance. A recent theory based on local and regional evidence further proposes that the competitive success of lianas over trees is driven by interactions between forest disturbance and climate. We present the first global assessment of liana–tree relative performance in response to forest disturbance and climate drivers. Using an unprecedented dataset, we analysed 651 vegetation samples representing 26,538 lianas and 82,802 trees from 556 unique locations worldwide, derived from 83 publications. Results show that lianas perform better relative to trees (increasing liana-to-tree ratio) when forests are disturbed, under warmer temperatures and lower precipitation and towards the tropical lowlands. We also found that lianas can be a critical factor hindering forest recovery in disturbed forests experiencing liana-favourable climates, as chronosequence data show that high competitive success of lianas over trees can persist for decades following disturbances, especially when the annual mean temperature exceeds 27.8°C, precipitation is less than 1614 mm and climatic water deficit is more than 829 mm. These findings reveal that degraded tropical forests with environmental conditions favouring lianas are disproportionately more vulnerable to liana dominance and thus can potentially stall succession, with important implications for the global carbon sink, and hence should be the highest priority to consider for restoration management.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Ngute ASK, Schoeman DS, Pfeifer M, van der Heijden GMF, Phillips OL, van Breugel M, Campbell MJ, Chandler CJ, Enquist BJ, Gallagher RV, Gehring C, Hall JS, Laurance S, Laurance WF, Letcher SG, Liu W, Sullivan MJP, Wright SJ, Yuan C, Marshall AR

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Global Change Biology

Year: 2024

Volume: 30

Issue: 1

Online publication date: 19/01/2024

Acceptance date: 19/12/2023

Date deposited: 20/02/2024

ISSN (print): 1354-1013

ISSN (electronic): 1365-2486

Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc

URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17140

DOI: 10.1111/gcb.17140

Data Access Statement: All primary data sources have been provided and described in Table S1. All raw and processed data supporting the results in this study are openly available in Zenodo https:// doi. org/ 10. 5281/ zenodo. 10428833 and Figshare https:// doi. org/ 10. 6084/ m9. figsh are. 24879021. Direct access to the original and raw data might be restricted due to ethical considerations and data privacy agreements with our data contributors. All requests to access specific raw data should be directed to the original data sources listed in Table S1.

PubMed id: 38273497


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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT170100279)
ForestGEO
HSBC Climate Partnership
Heising–Simons Foundation
Singapore's Ministry of Education (IG16-LR004, IG19_SG113)
SmallWorld Institute Fund
Stanley Motta
STRI
the Hoch family
The National Science Foundation of the United States
the University of the Sunshine Coast
Yale-NUS College

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