Nutrient Availability in Tropical Rain Forests: The Paradigm of Phosphorus Limitation

Dalling, James W.; Heineman, Katherine D.; López, Omar R.; Wright, S. Joseph; Turner, Benjamín L.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27422-5_12

Cited by 87 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This result suggests that differences in PUE are unlikely to contribute to the observed species responses in seedlings. However, foliar P concentrations from shade leaves of 137 adult trees collected on BCI correlated positively with their species P effect sizes (Dalling et al ., ), suggesting that differences in PUE may be more important in shade‐tolerant species or in adult trees.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Seedling growth responses to phosphorus reflect adult distribution patterns of tropical trees

et al. 2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Soils influence tropical forest composition at regional scales. In Panama, data on tree communities and underlying soils indicate that species frequently show distributional associations to soil phosphorus. To understand how these associations arise, we combined a pot experiment to measure seedling responses of 15 pioneer species to phosphorus addition with an analysis of the phylogenetic structure of phosphorus associations of the entire tree community. Growth responses of pioneers to phosphorus addition revealed a clear tradeoff: species from high-phosphorus sites grew fastest in the phosphorus-addition treatment, while species from low-phosphorus sites grew fastest in the low-phosphorus treatment. Traits associated with growth performance remain unclear: biomass allocation, phosphatase activity and phosphorus-use efficiency did not correlate with phosphorus associations; however, phosphatase activity was most strongly down-regulated in response to phosphorus addition in species from high-phosphorus sites. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that pioneers occur more frequently in clades where phosphorus associations are overdispersed as compared with the overall tree community, suggesting that selection on phosphorus acquisition and use may be strongest for pioneer species with high phosphorus demand. Our results show that phosphorus-dependent growth rates provide an additional explanation for the regional distribution of tree species in Panama, and possibly elsewhere.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Seedling growth responses to phosphorus reflect adult distribution patterns of tropical trees

et al. 2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The importance of the successional niche as the main driver of succession is well understood (Meiners et al, ; Rees et al, ), while that of the soil nutrient niche in driving compositional variation across early successional tropical plant communities is less established. One reason is that nutrient strategies vary widely among tropical plant species, but are only studied for a small proportion of diverse tropical plant communities (van Breugel et al, ; Dalling, Heineman, Lopez, Wright, & Turner, ; Nasto et al, ), and usually not concurrently with species successional strategies (but see Craven, Hall, Berlyn, Ashton, & Breugel, ). This is only the second study that quantitatively assessed how soil nutrients and successional age simultaneously affect the abundance of plant species across secondary forests in a tropical landscape (Werden et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil nutrients and dispersal limitation shape compositional variation in secondary tropical forests across multiple scales

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Soil resource partitioning and dispersal limitation have been shown to shape the tree community structure of mature tropical forests, but are poorly studied in the context of forest succession. We examined the relative contributions of both ecological processes to the variation in the species composition of young tropical secondary forests at different spatial scales, and if the relative importance of these two ecological processes changed during succession. At the species level, we examined if the association between species abundances and soil fertility differed between early and late successional species and/or changed over the course of succession. We used vegetation and soil data from 47 secondary forest sites with two plots each in a tropical agricultural landscape. A distance‐based redundancy analysis and variation partitioning were employed to examine the relative importance of spatial distance (proxy for dispersal limitation) and heterogeneity in soil nutrients (proxy for soil nutrient partitioning) at the landscape scale, and a linear regression to test their effects at the local scale. We examined interspecific variation in species’ responses to successional age and soil nutrients with a joint species distribution model. Dispersal limitation and soil niche partitioning drove considerable variation in the composition of plant communities at local and landscape scales. The relative contribution of these two ecological processes changed with scale (local vs. landscape) and topography (lower slope vs. upper slope plots). At the species level, significant abundance–soil fertility associations were mostly positive. Most species became less responsive to soil nutrients over the first few decades of tropical forest succession, probably because light became the main limiting resource in older forests. Synthesis. Our key finding is that spatial heterogeneity in soil resources and spatial distance jointly drive compositional variation within and across early successional forests. Our results highlight that a network of forest fragments enhances the resilience of ecological processes and the potential of secondary forests to restore and preserve biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes. To advance our understanding of ecological succession, we need to move beyond single‐factor and local‐scale studies and examine the effects of multiple variables on succession at different spatial scales.

show abstract

“…Tree nutrient‐use strategies are most commonly evaluated through the nutrient stoichiometry of fresh leaves. Soil‐based habitat distributions have been linked to foliar nutrient concentrations, because tropical plant taxa associated with high fertility soils contain greater concentrations of N and P in fresh leaves than species associated with low fertility soils (Tanner, ; Andersen et al ., ; Katabuchi et al ., ; Dalling et al., ). Despite shifts in community mean foliar chemistry along soil fertility gradients (Vitousek et al ., ; Han et al ., ; Fyllas et al ., ; Ordoñez et al ., ; Hayes et al ., ), foliar nutrient concentrations are poorly constrained by soil nutrient availability in tropical forests, as variation in foliar nutrients among co‐occurring species growing on the same soil habitat is nearly as great as regional variation in species foliar nutrients across soil fertility gradients (Townsend et al ., ; Fyllas et al ., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Variation in wood nutrients along a tropical soil fertility gradient

2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SummaryWood contains the majority of the nutrients in tropical trees, yet controls over wood nutrient concentrations and their function are poorly understood.We measured wood nutrient concentrations in 106 tree species in 10 forest plots spanning a regional fertility gradient in Panama. For a subset of species, we quantified foliar nutrients and wood density to test whether wood nutrients scale with foliar nutrients at the species level, or wood nutrient storage increases with wood density as predicted by the wood economics spectrum.Wood nutrient concentrations varied enormously among species from fourfold in nitrogen (N) to > 30-fold in calcium (Ca), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg) and phosphorus (P). Community-weighted mean wood nutrient concentrations correlated positively with soil Ca, K, Mg and P concentrations. Wood nutrients scaled positively with leaf nutrients, supporting the hypothesis that nutrient allocation is conserved across plant organs. Wood P was most sensitive to variation in soil nutrient availability, and significant radial declines in wood P indicated that tropical trees retranslocate P as sapwood transitions to heartwood. Wood P decreased with increasing wood density, suggesting that low wood P and dense wood are traits associated with tree species persistence on low fertility soils.Substantial variation among species and communities in wood nutrient concentrations suggests that allocation of nutrients to wood, especially P, influences species distributions and nutrient dynamics in tropical forests.

show abstract

Nutrient Availability in Tropical Rain Forests: The Paradigm of Phosphorus Limitation

Cited by 87 publications

References 46 publications

Seedling growth responses to phosphorus reflect adult distribution patterns of tropical trees

Seedling growth responses to phosphorus reflect adult distribution patterns of tropical trees

Soil nutrients and dispersal limitation shape compositional variation in secondary tropical forests across multiple scales

Variation in wood nutrients along a tropical soil fertility gradient

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About