@article{8ecacff133c7405a9fa5bd41498f61c2,
title = "Drier tropical forests are susceptible to functional changes in response to a long-term drought",
abstract = "Climatic changes have profound effects on the distribution of biodiversity, but untangling the links between climatic change and ecosystem functioning is challenging, particularly in high diversity systems such as tropical forests. Tropical forests may also show different responses to a changing climate, with baseline climatic conditions potentially inducing differences in the strength and timing of responses to droughts. Trait-based approaches provide an opportunity to link functional composition, ecosystem function and environmental changes. We demonstrate the power of such approaches by presenting a novel analysis of long-term responses of different tropical forest to climatic changes along a rainfall gradient. We explore how key ecosystem's biogeochemical properties have shifted over time as a consequence of multi-decadal drying. Notably, we find that drier tropical forests have increased their deciduous species abundance and generally changed more functionally than forests growing in wetter conditions, suggesting an enhanced ability to adapt ecologically to a drying environment.",
keywords = "Drying climate, West Africa, ecosystem functioning, plant traits, tropical forests",
author = "Jes{\'u}s Aguirre-Guti{\'e}rrez and Imma Oliveras and Sami Rifai and Sophie Fauset and Stephen Adu-Bredu and Kofi Affum-Baffoe and Baker, {Timothy R.} and Feldpausch, {Ted R.} and Agne Gvozdevaite and Wannes Hubau and Kraft, {Nathan J.B.} and Lewis, {Simon L.} and Sam Moore and {\"U}lo Niinemets and Theresa Peprah and Phillips, {Oliver L.} and Kasia Ziemi{\'n}ska and Brian Enquist and Yadvinder Malhi",
note = "Funding Information: We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that greatly improved our manuscript. This work is a product of the Global Ecosystems Monitoring (GEM) network (gem.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk), the African Tropical Rainforest Observation Network (AfriTRON; www.afritron.org) and ForestPlots.net. J.A.G. was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under the Rubicon programme with project number 019.162LW.010. The trait 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), and from the Royal Society-Leverhulme Africa Capacity Building Programme. The long-term forest monitoring campaigns and ForestPlots.net data management were funded by grants to O.P. from the European Research Council (Advanced Grant T-FORCES: 291585), and to O.P., Y.M. and S.L. from the Natural Environment Research Council. During data collection, I.O. was supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF-327990). Y.M. is supported by the Jackson Foundation. During data collection, S.F. was supported by and Earth and Biosphere institute studentship. Plot inventory data were funded by the Royal Society, NERC, Sebright's Education Foundation and Gilchrist Educational Trust. The authors thank Michael D. Swaine for his contribution with vegetation plot data, Janet Sprent for her help with the nitrogen fixing species and Natascha Luijken for her contribution to vessel trait measurements. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by CNRS and John Wiley & Sons Ltd",
year = "2019",
month = may,
doi = "10.1111/ele.13243",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "22",
pages = "855--865",
journal = "Ecology Letters",
issn = "1461-023X",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "5",
}