TY - JOUR
T1 - Hydraulic tradeoffs underlie local variation in tropical forest functional diversity and sensitivity to drought
AU - Lourenço, Jehová
AU - Enquist, Brian J.
AU - von Arx, Georg
AU - Sonsin-Oliveira, Julia
AU - Morino, Kiyomi
AU - Thomaz, Luciana Dias
AU - Milanez, Camilla Rozindo Dias
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2022 New Phytologist Foundation.
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - Tropical forests are important to the regulation of climate and the maintenance of biodiversity on Earth. However, these ecosystems are threatened by climate change, as temperatures rise and droughts' frequency and duration increase. Xylem anatomical traits are an essential component in understanding and predicting forest responses to changes in water availability. We calculated the community-weighted means and variances of xylem anatomical traits of hydraulic and structural importance (plot-level trait values weighted by species abundance) to assess their linkages to local adaptation and community assembly in response to varying soil water conditions in an environmentally diverse Brazilian Atlantic Forest habitat. Scaling approaches revealed community-level tradeoffs in xylem traits not observed at the species level. Towards drier sites, xylem structural reinforcement and integration balanced against hydraulic efficiency and capacitance xylem traits, leading to changes in plant community diversity. We show how general community assembly rules are reflected in persistent fiber–parenchyma and xylem hydraulic tradeoffs. Trait variation across a moisture gradient is larger between species than within species and is realized mainly through changes in species composition and abundance, suggesting habitat specialization. Modeling efforts to predict tropical forest diversity and drought sensitivity may benefit from adding hydraulic architecture traits into the analysis.
AB - Tropical forests are important to the regulation of climate and the maintenance of biodiversity on Earth. However, these ecosystems are threatened by climate change, as temperatures rise and droughts' frequency and duration increase. Xylem anatomical traits are an essential component in understanding and predicting forest responses to changes in water availability. We calculated the community-weighted means and variances of xylem anatomical traits of hydraulic and structural importance (plot-level trait values weighted by species abundance) to assess their linkages to local adaptation and community assembly in response to varying soil water conditions in an environmentally diverse Brazilian Atlantic Forest habitat. Scaling approaches revealed community-level tradeoffs in xylem traits not observed at the species level. Towards drier sites, xylem structural reinforcement and integration balanced against hydraulic efficiency and capacitance xylem traits, leading to changes in plant community diversity. We show how general community assembly rules are reflected in persistent fiber–parenchyma and xylem hydraulic tradeoffs. Trait variation across a moisture gradient is larger between species than within species and is realized mainly through changes in species composition and abundance, suggesting habitat specialization. Modeling efforts to predict tropical forest diversity and drought sensitivity may benefit from adding hydraulic architecture traits into the analysis.
KW - ecological wood anatomy
KW - fiber–parenchyma tradeoff
KW - functional wood anatomy
KW - quantitative wood anatomy
KW - safety–efficiency tradeoff
KW - trait-based ecology
KW - tropical plant communities
KW - water table depth gradient
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U2 - 10.1111/nph.17944
DO - 10.1111/nph.17944
M3 - Article
C2 - 34981534
AN - SCOPUS:85124027764
SN - 0028-646X
VL - 234
SP - 50
EP - 63
JO - New Phytologist
JF - New Phytologist
IS - 1
ER -