Leaf phenology is associated with soil water availability and xylem traits in a tropical dry forest

Competing hypotheses explaining species' use of resources have been advanced. Resource limitations in habitat and/or food are factors that affect assemblages of species. These limitations could drive the evolution of morphological and/or behavioural specialization, permitting the coexistence of closely related species through resource partitioning and niche differentiation. Alternatively, when resources are unlimited, fluctuations in resources availability will cause concomitant shifts in resource use regardless of species identity. Here, we used next-generation sequencing to test these hypotheses and characterize the diversity, overlap and seasonal variation in the diet of three species of insectivorous bats of the genus Pteronotus. We identified 465 prey (MOTUs) in the guano of 192 individuals. Lepidoptera and Diptera represented the most consumed insect orders. Diet of bats exhibited a moderate level of overlap, with the highest value between Pteronotus parnellii and Pteronotus personatus in the wet season. We found higher dietary overlap between species during the same seasons than within any single species across seasons. This suggests that diets of the three species are driven more by prey availability than by any particular predator-specific characteristic. P. davyi and P. personatus increased their dietary breadth during the dry season, whereas P. parnellii diet was broader and had the highest effective number of prey species in all seasons. This supports the existence of dietary flexibility in generalist bats and dietary niche overlapping among groups of closely related species in highly seasonal ecosystems. Moreover, the abundance and availability of insect prey may drive the diet of insectivores.

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“…; Méndez‐Alonzo et al . ). Vegetation in the island consists of tropical deciduous and tropical semi‐deciduous forest (Rzedowski ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…; Méndez‐Alonzo et al . ). Tropical dry forests frequently show extreme changes in the available resources during the wet and dry season, therefore altering the composition and diversity of fauna (Razo‐González et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Dietary overlap and seasonality in three species of mormoopid bats from a tropical dry forest

Salinas‐Ramos

León‐Régàgnon

et al. 2015

Molecular Ecology

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“…Indeed, spatial variation in soil water content has been found to drive spatial variation in leaf habit, with evergreen species associated with high soil water content (low‐elevation moist sites, Méndez‐Alonzo et al . ; deep soils having high available water capacity, Murata et al . ), and deciduous species associated with low soil water content (hills or shallow soils).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The determinants of tropical forest deciduousness: disentangling the effects of rainfall and geology in central Africa

et al. 2016

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Understanding the environmental determinants of forests deciduousness i.e. proportion of deciduous trees in a forest stand, is of great importance when predicting the impact of ongoing global climate change on forests. In this study, we examine (i) how forest deciduousness varies in relation to rainfall and geology, and (ii) whether the influence of geology on deciduousness could be related to differences in soil fertility and water content between geological substrates. The study was conducted in mixed moist semi-deciduous forests in the northern part of the Congo basin. We modelled the response of forest deciduousness to the severity of the dry season across four contrasting geological substrates (sandstone, alluvium, metamorphic and basic rocks). For this, we combined information on forest composition at genus level based on commercial forest inventories (62 624 0.5 ha plots scattered over 6 million of ha), leaf habit, and rainfall and geological maps. We further examined whether substrates differ in soil fertility and water-holding capacity using soil data from 37 pits in an area that was, at the time, relatively unexplored. • Forest deciduousness increased with the severity of the dry season, and this increase strongly varied with the geological substrate. Geology was found to be three times more important than the rainfall regime in explaining the total variation in deciduousness. The four substrates differed in soil properties, with higher fertility and water-holding capacity on metamorphic and basic rocks than on sandstone and alluvium. The increase in forest deciduousness was stronger on the substrates that formed resource-rich clay soils (metamorphic and basic rocks) than on substrates that formed resource-poor sandy soils (sandstone and alluvium). Synthesis. We found evidence that tropical forest deciduousness is the result of both the competitive advantage of deciduous species in climates with high rainfall seasonality, and the persistence of evergreen species on resource-poor soils. Our findings offer a clear illustration of well-known theoretical leaf carbon economy models, explaining the patterns in the dominance of evergreen versus deciduous species. And, this large-scale assessment of the interaction between climate and geology in determining forest deciduousness may help to improve future predictions of vegetation distribution under climate change scenarios. In central Africa, forest is likely to respond differently to variation in rainfall and/or evapotranspiration depending on the geological substrate. (Résumé d'auteur

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“…, Méndez‐Alonzo et al . ). The leaf shedding strategy, which is based on the reduction in leaf area for transpiration, can allow more efficient control of stomatal opening, thereby sustaining high water use efficiency ( i.e ., high rate between CO 2 assimilation and transpiration).…”

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confidence: 97%

Weak relationships between leaf phenology and isohydric and anisohydric behavior in lowland wet tropical forest trees

et al. 2016

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Wet tropical forest trees display a wide range of leaf phenology dynamics. However, the interrelation between deciduousness, water status, and leaf and stem characteristics have been poorly investigated compared with dry forests. We studied wet forest trees to answer the following questions: (1) do water regulation modes (iso/anisohydric behavior) of evergreen species differ from those found in deciduous species? (2) Does leaf water potential (ΨL) influences leaffall and emergence dynamics? (3) Are leaf and stem characteristics consistent across evergreen and deciduous trees? We evaluated vegetative phenology, ΨL, and leaf and stem characteristics of six evergreen and three deciduous species monthly for 2 yr. Species exhibited different leaffall and emergence dynamics, as well as different water regulation modes, independent of their deciduousness. Thus, the relationship between leaf phenology and water regulation behaviors appears to be a species‐specific property rather than a functional group attribute. ΨL had no direct influence on the dynamics of leaffall and/or emergence, indicating that this process is not modulated by water availability alone. Individual groups of evergreen and deciduous species could not be identified using principal component analysis (PCA), but a decoupling was observed in the leaf and stem economics spectra. The lack of an interrelation between deciduousness and iso/anisohydry, as well as the independence of leaf and stem trade‐offs, emphasizes that more systematic measurements of vegetative phenology and ecophysiological characteristics are necessary to advance our knowledge of leaf habit and water regulation behaviors based on the functional traits of wet forest plants.

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Leaf phenology is associated with soil water availability and xylem traits in a tropical dry forest

Cited by 81 publications

References 61 publications

Dietary overlap and seasonality in three species of mormoopid bats from a tropical dry forest

Dietary overlap and seasonality in three species of mormoopid bats from a tropical dry forest

The determinants of tropical forest deciduousness: disentangling the effects of rainfall and geology in central Africa

Weak relationships between leaf phenology and isohydric and anisohydric behavior in lowland wet tropical forest trees

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