Dataset Information

Species distributions in response to individual soil nutrients and seasonal drought across a community of tropical trees.

ABSTRACT: Tropical forest vegetation is shaped by climate and by soil, but understanding how the distributions of individual tree species respond to specific resources has been hindered by high diversity and consequent rarity. To study species over an entire community, we surveyed trees and measured soil chemistry across climatic and geological gradients in central Panama and then used a unique hierarchical model of species occurrence as a function of rainfall and soil chemistry to circumvent analytical difficulties posed by rare species. The results are a quantitative assessment of the responses of 550 tree species to eight environmental factors, providing a measure of the importance of each factor across the entire tree community. Dry-season intensity and soil phosphorus were the strongest predictors, each affecting the distribution of more than half of the species. Although we anticipated clear-cut responses to dry-season intensity, the finding that many species have pronounced associations with either high or low phosphorus reveals a previously unquantified role for this nutrient in limiting tropical tree distributions. The results provide the data necessary for understanding distributional limits of tree species and predicting future changes in forest composition.

SUBMITTER: Condit R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3612601 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Species distributions in response to individual soil nutrients and seasonal drought across a community of tropical trees.

Condit Richard R Engelbrecht Bettina M J BM Pino Delicia D Pérez Rolando R Turner Benjamin L BL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20130225 13

Tropical forest vegetation is shaped by climate and by soil, but understanding how the distributions of individual tree species respond to specific resources has been hindered by high diversity and consequent rarity. To study species over an entire community, we surveyed trees and measured soil chemistry across climatic and geological gradients in central Panama and then used a unique hierarchical model of species occurrence as a function of rainfall and soil chemistry to circumvent analytical d ...[more]

PMID: 23440213

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Project description:Dry periods are predicted to become more frequent and severe in the future in some parts of the tropics, including Amazonia, potentially causing reduced productivity, higher tree mortality and increased emissions of stored carbon. Using a long-term (12 year) through-fall exclusion (TFE) experiment in the tropics, we test the hypothesis that trees produce leaves adapted to cope with higher levels of water stress, by examining the following leaf characteristics: area, thickness, leaf mass per area, vein density, stomatal density, the thickness of palisade mesophyll, spongy mesophyll and both of the epidermal layers, internal cavity volume and the average cell sizes of the palisade and spongy mesophyll. We also test whether differences in leaf anatomy are consistent with observed differential drought-induced mortality responses among taxa, and look for relationships between leaf anatomy, and leaf water relations and gas exchange parameters. Our data show that trees do not produce leaves that are more xeromorphic in response to 12 years of soil moisture deficit. However, the drought treatment did result in increases in the thickness of the adaxial epidermis (TFE: 20.5 ± 1.5 µm, control: 16.7 ± 1.0 µm) and the internal cavity volume (TFE: 2.43 ± 0.50 mm3 cm-2, control: 1.77 ± 0.30 mm3 cm-2). No consistent differences were detected between drought-resistant and drought-sensitive taxa, although interactions occurred between drought-sensitivity status and drought treatment for the palisade mesophyll thickness (P = 0.034) and the cavity volume of the leaves (P = 0.025). The limited response to water deficit probably reflects a tight co-ordination between leaf morphology, water relations and photosynthetic properties. This suggests that there is little plasticity in these aspects of plant anatomy in these taxa, and that phenotypic plasticity in leaf traits may not facilitate the acclimation of Amazonian trees to the predicted future reductions in dry season water availability.

Dataset Information

Species distributions in response to individual soil nutrients and seasonal drought across a community of tropical trees.

Publications

Species distributions in response to individual soil nutrients and seasonal drought across a community of tropical trees.

Similar Datasets

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