17 documents found, page 1 of 2
Environmental gradients and the evolution of successional habitat specializatio...
Letcher, Susan G.; Lasky, Jesse R.; Chazdon, Robin L.; Norden, Natalia; Wright, Stuart Joseph; Meave, Jorge A.; Pérez-García, Eduardo A.; Muñoz, RodrigoSuccessional gradients are ubiquitous in nature, yet few studies have systematically examined the evolutionary origins of taxa that specialize at different successional stages. Here we quantify successional habitat specialization in Neotropical forest trees and evaluate its evolutionary lability along a precipitation gradient. Theoretically, successional habitat specialization should be more evolutionarily cons...
Competition influences tree growth, but not mortality, across environmental gra...
Rozendaal, Danaë M.A.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Lewis, Simon L.; Affum-Baffoe, Kofi; Alvarez, Esteban; Andrade, Ana C.S.; Aragao, L. E.O.C.Competition among trees is an important driver of community structure and dynamics in tropical forests. Neighboring trees may impact an individual tree’s growth rate and probability of mortality, but large-scale geographic and environmental variation in these competitive effects has yet to be evaluated across the tropical forest biome. We quantified effects of competition on tree-level basal area growth and mor...
Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora
ter Steege, H.; Prado, Paulo I.; Lima, Renato A.Fde; Pos, Edwin T.; Coelho, Luiz Souza de; Lima Filho, Diógenes de Andrade; Salomão, Rafael PaivaAmazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to an extended database of forest plots with up-to-date taxonomy. We show that the species abundance distribution of Amazonia is best approximated by a logseries with aggregated individuals,...
Evolutionary heritage influences amazon tree ecology
Souza, Fernanda Coelho de; Dexter, Kyle Graham; Phillips, Oliver L.; Brienen, Roel J.W.; Chave, Jérôme; Galbraith, David R.; Lopez-Gonzalez, GabrielaLineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative importance of these processes requires large-scale quantification of traits and evolutionary relationships among species. The Amazonian tree flora comprises a high diversity of angiospe...
Rapid decay of tree-community composition in Amazonian forest fragments
Laurance, William F.; Nascimento, Henrique Eduardo Mendonça; Laurance, Susan G.W.; Andrade, Ana C.S.; Ribeiro, José Eduardo L.S.; Giraldo, Juan PabloForest fragmentation is considered a greater threat to vertebrates than to tree communities because individual trees are typically long-lived and require only small areas for survival. Here we show that forest fragmentation provokes surprisingly rapid and profound alterations in Amazonian tree-community composition. Results were derived from a 22-year study of exceptionally diverse tree communities in 40 1-ha p...
Habitat fragmentation, variable edge effects, and the landscape-divergence hypo...
Laurance, William F.; Nascimento, Henrique Eduardo Mendonça; Laurance, Susan G.W.; Andrade, Ana C.S.; Ewers, Robert M.; Harms, Kyle E.Edge effects are major drivers of change in many fragmented landscapes, but are often highly variable in space and time. Here we assess variability in edge effects altering Amazon forest dynamics, plant community composition, invading species, and carbon storage, in the world's largest and longest-running experimental study of habitat fragmentation. Despite detailed knowledge of local landscape conditions, spat...
Drought-mortality relationships for tropical forests
Phillips, Oliver L.; Van Der Heijden, Geertje M.F.; Lewis, Simon L.; Lopez-Gonzalez, Gabriela; Aragao, L. E.O.C.; Lloyd, Jon; Malhi, Yadvinder SinghThe rich ecology of tropical forests is intimately tied to their moisture status. Multi-site syntheses can provide a macro-scale view of these linkages and their susceptibility to changing climates. Here, we report pan-tropical and regional-scale analyses of tree vulnerability to drought. We assembled available data on tropical forest tree stem mortality before, during, and after recent drought events, from 119...
Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling
Fauset, Sophie; Johnson, Michelle O.; Gloor, Manuel U.; Baker, Timothy R.; Monteagudo M, Abel; Brienen, Roel J.W.; Feldpausch, Ted R.While Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, the abundance of trees is skewed strongly towards relatively few â € hyperdominantâ €™ species. In addition to their diversity, Amazonian trees are a key component of the global carbon cycle, assimilating and storing more carbon than any other ecosystem on Earth. Here we ask, using a unique data set of 530 forest plots, if the functions of storing and produci...
Tree height integrated into pantropical forest biomass estimates
Feldpausch, Ted R.; Lloyd, Jon; Lewis, Simon L.; Brienen, Roel J.W.; Gloor, Manuel E.; Monteagudo-Mendoza, Abel; Lopez-Gonzalez, GabrielaAboveground tropical tree biomass and carbon storage estimates commonly ignore tree height (H). We estimate the effect of incorporating H on tropics-wide forest biomass estimates in 327 plots across four continents using 42 656 H and diameter measurements and harvested trees from 20 sites to answer the following questions: ; 1. What is the best H-model form and geographic unit to include in biomass models to mi...
Synthesis of the first 10 years of long-term ecological research in Amazonian F...
Costa, Fernanda Vieira; Costa, Flávia Regina Capellotto; Magnusson, William Ernest; Franklin, E.; Zuanon, Jansen; Cintra, Renato; Luizão, Flávio JesusWe present a synthesis of the first 10 years of Long Term Ecological Research project in Amazonian Forest. We elucidate the natural dynamics of forest ecosystem processes and associated biota, and its changes caused by distinct pressures of selective timber extraction and forest fragmentation. We found that, for both plants and animals, densities of individuals and distribution of species assemblages are spatia...