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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Yit Arn TehORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Springer Nature, 2022.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
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.
Author(s): Aguirre-Gutiérrez J, Berenguer E, Oliveras Menor I, Bauman D, Corral-Rivas JJ, Nava-Miranda MG, Both S, Ndong JE, Ondo FE, Bengone NN, Mihinhou V, Dalling JW, Heineman K, Figueiredo A, González-M R, Norden N, Hurtado-M AB, González D, Salgado-Negret B, Reis SM, Moraes de Seixas MM, Farfan-Rios W, Shenkin A, Riutta T, Girardin CAJ, Moore S, Abernethy K, Asner GP, Bentley LP, Burslem DFRP, Cernusak LA, Enquist BJ, Ewers RM, Ferreira J, Jeffery KJ, Joly CA, Marimon-Junior BH, Martin RE, Morandi PS, Phillips OL, Bennett AC, Lewis SL, Quesada CA, Marimon BS, Kissling WD, Silman M, Teh YA, White LJT, Salinas N, Coomes DA, Barlow J, Adu-Bredu S, Malhi Y
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Ecology & Evolution
Year: 2022
Volume: 6
Issue: 7
Pages: 878-889
Print publication date: 01/07/2022
Online publication date: 16/05/2022
Acceptance date: 24/03/2022
Date deposited: 12/02/2025
ISSN (electronic): 2397-334X
Publisher: Springer Nature
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01747-6
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01747-6
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/d3m2-kr49
Data Access Statement: The vegetation census and plant functional traits data that support the findings of this study are available from their sources (www.ForestPlots.net and gem.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk/). To comply with the original data owners, the processed community-level data used in this study can be accessed through the corresponding author upon request.
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