Compositional response of Amazon forests to climate change

Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert, Timothy R. Baker, Kyle G. Dexter, Simon L. Lewis, Roel J. W. Brienen, Ted R. Feldpausch, Jon Lloyd, Abel Monteagudo-Mendoza, Luzmila Arroyo, Esteban Alvarez-Davila, Niro Higuchi, Beatriz S. Marimon, Ben Hur Marimon-Junior, Marcos Silveira, Emilio Vilanova, Emanuel Gloor, Yadvinder Malhi, Jerome Chave, Jos Barlow, Damien BonalNallaret Davila Cardozo, Terry Erwin, Sophie Fauset, Bruno Herault, Susan Laurance, Lourens Poorter, Lan Qie, Clement Stahl, Martin J. P. Sullivan, Hans ter Steege, Vincent Antoine Vos, Pieter A. Zuidema, Everton Almeida, Edmar Almeida de Oliveira, Ana Andrade, Simone Aparecida Vieira, Luiz Aragao, Alejandro Araujo-Murakami, Eric Arets, Gerardo A. Aymard C, Christopher Baraloto, Plinio Barbosa Camargo, Jorcely G. Barroso, Frans Bongers, Rene Boot, Jose Luis Camargo, Wendeson Castro, Victor Chama Moscoso, James Comiskey, Fernando Cornejo Valverde, Antonio Carlos Lola da Costa, Jhon del Aguila Pasquel, Anthony Di Fiore, Luisa Fernanda Duque, Fernando Elias, Julien Engel, Gerardo Flores Llampazo, David Galbraith, Rafael Herrera Fernandez, Euridice Honorio Coronado, Wannes Hubau, Eliana Jimenez-Rojas, Adriano Jose Nogueira Lima, Ricardo Keichi Umetsu, William Laurance, Gabriela Lopez-Gonzalez, Thomas Lovejoy, Omar Aurelio Melo Cruz, Paulo S. Morandi, David Neill, Percy Nunez Vargas, Nadir C. Pallqui Camacho, Alexander Parada Gutierrez, Guido Pardo, Julie Peacock, Marielos Pena-Claros, Maria Cristina Penuela-Mora, Pascal Petronelli, Georgia C. Pickavance, Nigel Pitman, Adriana Prieto, Carlos Quesada, Hirma Ramirez-Angulo, Maxime Rejou-Mechain, Zorayda Restrepo Correa, Anand Roopsind, Agustin Rudas, Rafael Salomao, Natalino Silva, Javier Silva Espejo, James Singh, Juliana Stropp, John Terborgh, Raquel Thomas, Marisol Toledo, Armando Torres-Lezama, Luis Valenzuela Gamarra, Peter J. van de Meer, Geertje van der Heijden, Peter van der Hout, Rodolfo Vasquez Martinez, Cesar Vela, Ima Celia Guimaraes Vieira, Oliver L. Phillips

    Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    Most of the planet's diversity is concentrated in the tropics, which includes many regions undergoing rapid climate change. Yet, while climate‐induced biodiversity changes are widely documented elsewhere, few studies have addressed this issue for lowland tropical ecosystems. Here we investigate whether the floristic and functional composition of intact lowland Amazonian forests have been changing by evaluating records from 106 long‐term inventory plots spanning 30 years. We analyse three traits that have been hypothesized to respond to different environmental drivers (increase in moisture stress and atmospheric CO2 concentrations): maximum tree size, biogeographic water‐deficit affiliation and wood density. Tree communities have become increasingly dominated by large‐statured taxa, but to date there has been no detectable change in mean wood density or water deficit affiliation at the community level, despite most forest plots having experienced an intensification of the dry season. However, among newly recruited trees, dry‐affiliated genera have become more abundant, while the mortality of wet‐affiliated genera has increased in those plots where the dry season has intensified most. Thus, a slow shift to a more dry‐affiliated Amazonia is underway, with changes in compositional dynamics (recruits and mortality) consistent with climate‐change drivers, but yet to significantly impact whole‐community composition. The Amazon observational record suggests that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is driving a shift within tree communities to large‐statured species and that climate changes to date will impact forest composition, but long generation times of tropical trees mean that biodiversity change is lagging behind climate change.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)39-56
    Number of pages18
    JournalGlobal Change Biology
    Volume25
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2019

    Funding

    Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Grant/Award Number: NE/ N004655/1; NERC Consortium Grants “AMAZONICA”; BIO‐RED; European Research Council (ERC); The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; European Union's Seventh Framework Programme, Grant/ Award Number: 282664; Royal Society, Grant/Award Number: CH160091; Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award We thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This manuscript is a product of the RAINFOR network. It integrates the effort of hundreds of researchers and field assistants across Amazonia over three decades and has benefited from the sustained support of rural communities and local institutions. We thank the following individuals in particular: Atila Alves de Oliveira, Benoit Burban, Bert van Ulft, Eliana Riascos, Foster Brown, Francisco Gómez, Freddy Ramirez Arevalo, Iêda Leão do Amaral, Irina Mendoza Polo, Jean Olivier, Joey Talbot, John Lleigue, Marcela Serna, Michel Baisie, Lilian Blanc, Patricia Alvarez Loayza, Roderick Zagt, Nazareno Martinez, Olaf Banki, Pétrus Naisso, Samaria Mura-kami, Samuel Almeida, Timothy Killeen, Tomas Dario Gutierrez, Walter Huaraca Huasco, Wemo Betian and Vincent Bezard. Support for RAINFOR has come from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Urgency Grants and NERC Consortium Grants “AMAZO-NICA” (NE/F005806/1), “TROBIT” (NE/D005590/1) and “BIO‐RED” (NE/N012542/1), a European Research Council (ERC) grant (T‐ FORCES, “Tropical Forests in the Changing Earth System”), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (282664, “AMAZALERT”) and the Royal Society (CH160091). OLP was supported by an ERC Advanced Grant and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. KGD was supported by a Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellowship. This paper is part of the PhD of AE‐M, which was funded by the ERC T‐FORCES grant. AE‐M is currently supported by T‐FORCES and the NERC project “TREMOR” (NE/N004655/1).

    FundersFunder number
    Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
    Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
    Seventh Framework Programme282664
    Natural Environment Research CouncilNE/D005590/1, NE/N012542/1, NE/ N004655/1, NE/F005806/1
    Leverhulme Trust
    Royal SocietyCH160091
    European Research Council
    Seventh Framework Programme

      Keywords

      • bioclimatic niches
      • climate change
      • compositional shifts
      • functional traits
      • temporal trends
      • tropical forests

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