Trait‐based community assembly pattern along a forest succession gradient in a seasonally dry tropical forest

Subedi, Suresh C.; Ross, Michael S.; Sah, Jay P.; Redwine, Jed; Baraloto, Christopher

doi:10.1002/ecs2.2719

Cited by 28 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(126 reference statements)

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“…The observed internal filtering for a few traits in resource-rich sites may be due to competition; as communities become taller, increased partitioning of light can occur. In high-resource sites such as in marsh hammocks, where moisture and nutrients are more abundant, trees exhibit traits that allow them to grow rapidly in height (high SLA and low wood specific gravity), supporting earlier observations describing early successional species (Ross et al 2016, Subedi et al 2019. Species in Everglades marsh hammocks also have relatively high stomatal conductance (Lin and Sternberg 1992), which likely contributes to their high growth rates.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…, Subedi et al. ). Species in Everglades marsh hammocks also have relatively high stomatal conductance (Lin and Sternberg ), which likely contributes to their high growth rates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Environmental filters may exclude species with combinations of functional traits that are unsuitable at any given site. In the Florida Keys dry tropical forest, community assembly is expected to be driven mainly by freshwater availability (Subedi et al 2019). As a functional group, the low SLA, high WSG, high leaf d 13 C, and short stature of Keys forests suggest that trees in this region are better adapted to drought stress more than trees in other areas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…), and disturbances (Subedi et al. ). Despite the recognition that intraspecific trait variation is the key in explaining a population's resilience to environmental change and an individual's ability to coexist and compete with its neighbors (Albert et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Functional trait variations among species have been used to quantify plant community assembly processes across broad environmental ranges, including hemisphere-wide (Swenson et al 2012), latitudinal (LaManna et al 2014, Lawson and Weir 2014, or elevational (Enquist et al 2015, Umaña andSwenson 2019) gradients. Interspecific trait variability may also be driven by local factors, such as gradients in light intensity (Marques et al 2000), soil water availability (Chaturvedi et al 2011a,b), species interaction and heterogeneity in resource availability (Moreira et al 2012), and disturbances (Subedi et al 2019). Despite the recognition that intraspecific trait variation is the key in explaining a population's resilience to environmental change and an individual's ability to coexist and compete with its neighbors (Albert et al 2010, Jung et al 2010, Violle et al 2012, Siefert et al 2015, only a few studies have examined the relationship between interspecific and intraspecific trait variability in explaining diversity patterns across local and regional spatial scales (Paine et al 2011, Hulshof et al 2013, Le Bagousse-Pinguet et al 2014.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence for trait‐based community assembly patterns in hardwood hammock forests

et al. 2019

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The hardwood forests of south Florida, commonly referred to as hammocks, persist as well‐drained patches of broadleaf forest, embedded in a matrix of brackish water swamp, freshwater marsh, or pineland. Little is known about the patterns of community assembly of these subtropical forest communities in the landscape mosaic of south Florida. We used a functional trait approach to understand the composition of these communities and their responses to environmental variation across four areas of south Florida: the pine rocklands and freshwater marshes in Everglades National Park, and the lower and upper Florida Keys, where the hammocks are surrounded by halophytic swamp communities. These sites represent an environmental gradient from less‐productive, more xeric sites in the lower Florida Keys, to more‐productive, wetter sites in the Everglades marshes. We examined the patterns of trait variation at three levels (individual, population, and community) to examine the underlying processes driving assembly in these hammock communities. To understand processes governing community composition in each site, we used methods that partition variance in six traits (maximum tree height, specific leaf area, wood specific gravity, leaf nitrogen, leaf phosphorus, and leaf stable carbon isotope ratios) into internal and external filtering components. Community‐weighted mean trait values for three traits (specific leaf area, height, and leaf phosphorus) increased significantly from dry, less‐productive coastal sites in the Florida Keys to the moist, more‐productive areas on the mainland, while wood specific gravity and leaf δ13C showed the opposite pattern. For one or more traits per site, standardized effect sizes differed significantly from null expectation. Processes such as competition for resources (e.g., water, nutrients, light) and species sorting across microhabitats (i.e., within site) operate to increase local functional trait variation within communities and among species across sites. External filtering on individuals for height and leaf phosphorus differed significantly from null expectations across sites, while external filtering on species was only observed for specific leaf area, maximum tree height, and leaf phosphorus. These results are consistent with strong environmental filtering across the region, among local communities differing in freshwater accessibility or that occupy different positions along strong edaphic gradients. Our results confirm the importance of intraspecific variation among species and reflect a high degree of trait plasticity across the environmental gradient.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…, Subedi et al. ). Species in Everglades marsh hammocks also have relatively high stomatal conductance (Lin and Sternberg ), which likely contributes to their high growth rates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence for trait‐based community assembly patterns in hardwood hammock forests

et al. 2019

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Using large‐scale tropical dry forest restoration to test successional theory

Werden

Calderón-Morales

Alvarado

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

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Microclimatic conditions change dramatically as forests age and impose strong filters on community assembly during succession. Light availability is the most limiting environmental factor in tropical wet forest succession; by contrast, water availability is predicted to strongly influence tropical dry forest (TDF) successional dynamics. While mechanisms underlying TDF successional trajectories are not well understood, observational studies have demonstrated that TDF communities transition from being dominated by species with conservative traits to species with acquisitive traits, the opposite of tropical wet forest. Determining how functional traits predict TDF tree species’ responses to changing environmental conditions could elucidate mechanisms underlying tree performance during TDF succession. We implemented a 6‐ha restoration experiment on a degraded Vertisol in Costa Rica to determine (1) how TDF tree species with different resource‐use strategies performed along a successional gradient and (2) how ecophysiological functional traits correlated with tree performance in simulated successional stages. We used two management treatments to simulate distinct successional stages including: clearing all remnant vegetation (early‐succession), or interplanting seedlings with no clearing (mid‐succession). We crossed these two management treatments (cleared/interplanted) with two species mixes with different resource‐use strategies (acquisitive/conservative) to examine their interaction. Overall seedling survival after 2 yr was low, 15.1–26.4% in the four resource‐use‐strategy × management‐treatment combinations, and did not differ between the management treatments or resource‐use‐strategy groups. However, seedling growth rates were dramatically higher for all species in the cleared treatment (year 1, 69.1% higher; year 2, 143.3% higher) and defined resource‐use strategies had some capacity to explain seedling performance. Overall, ecophysiological traits were better predictors of species’ growth and survival than resource‐use strategies defined by leaf and stem traits such as specific leaf area. Moreover, ecophysiological traits related to water use had a stronger influence on seedling performance in the cleared, early‐successional treatment, indicating that the influence of microclimatic conditions on tree survival and growth shifts predictably during TDF succession. Our findings suggest that ecophysiological traits should be explicitly considered to understand shifts in TDF functional composition during succession and that using these traits to design species mixes could greatly improve TDF restoration outcomes.

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Allometric relationships, functional differentiations, and scaling of growth rates across 151 tree species in China

et al. 2021

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Chinese trees adapted to wet, warm, highly heterogeneous, and dynamic light environments might be expected to systematically differ from other non-Chinese trees based on stem allometry and life em allo. However, our understanding of the extent to which how differentiation in forest architecture and species size influences tree allometry relates to fundamental physiological and ecological trade-offs, climate, forest structure, and function is limited. We quantified height-diameter allometries and growth increments of 13,594 individuals of 151 tree species across China. Although trees grew statistically indistinguishably from the theoretically predicted exponent, the height-diameter allometries for trees in China deviated from tree patterns in other continental forests worldwide. Chinese trees showed substantially lower heights at a given diameter for larger trees and asymptotic heights (33.05 m), with values were 5.5% to 43.3% lower than those estimated for continental rain forest trees in South America, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. In total, 149 of 151 species showed significant nonlinearity of height-diameter allometry with asymptotic heights ranging from 6.33 to 50.54 m; additionally, half (74/149 species) fell in the range of 20-33.5 m, averaging 21.98 AE 8.70 m (SE) for canopy trees. In subsets of canopy trees sampled from larger-statured species and deciduous trees, the approximated maximum heights were 14-42% larger than those of smaller-statured and evergreens and those in other wet and warmer regions found worldwide. These results suggest flexible phenotypic responses of height-diameter allometries to heterogeneous light conditions along understory-canopy gradients. Average growth rates, varying from 0.02 to 0.78 cm/yr (mean of 0.25 cm/yr), were positively related to the asymptotic height, diameter at inflection, and allometric intercept but negatively correlated with the shape of the asymptotic curve and allometric slope. Species with asymptotic heights above 30 m or inflection sizes larger than 20 cm clearly depicted higher growth rates than smaller ones.

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Trait‐based community assembly pattern along a forest succession gradient in a seasonally dry tropical forest

Cited by 28 publications

References 62 publications

Evidence for trait‐based community assembly patterns in hardwood hammock forests

Evidence for trait‐based community assembly patterns in hardwood hammock forests

Using large‐scale tropical dry forest restoration to test successional theory

Allometric relationships, functional differentiations, and scaling of growth rates across 151 tree species in China

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