Internet Archive Scholar

Drier tropical forests are susceptible to functional changes in response to a long-term drought

Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Imma Oliveras, Sami Rifai, Sophie Fauset, Stephen Adu-Bredu, Kofi Affum-Baffoe, Timothy R. Baker, Ted R. Feldpausch, Agne Gvozdevaite, Wannes Hubau, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Simon L. Lewis (+8 others)
2019 Ecology Letters  

Preserved Fulltext

fulltext thumbnail
Web Archive Capture PDF (1.3 MB)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190429193810/http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10070122/8/Lewis_Drier%20tropical%20forests%20are%20susceptible%20to%20functional%20changes%20in%20response%20to%20a%20long-term%20drought_Proof.pdf

A copy of this work was available on the public web and has been preserved in the Wayback Machine. The capture dates from 2019; you can also visit the original URL. The file type is application/pdf.

Climatic changes have profound effects on the distribution of biodiversity, but untangling the links between climatic change and ecosystem functioning is challenging, particularly in high diversity systems such as tropical forests. Tropical forests may also show different responses to a changing climate, with baseline climatic conditions potentially inducing differences in the strength and timing of responses to droughts. Trait-based approaches provide an opportunity to link functional
more » ... on, ecosystem function and environmental changes. We demonstrate the power of such approaches by presenting a novel analysis of long-term responses of different tropical forest to climatic changes along a rainfall gradient. We explore how key ecosystem's biogeochemical properties have shifted over time as a consequence of multi-decadal drying. Notably, we find that drier tropical forests have increased their deciduous species abundance and generally changed more functionally than forests growing in wetter conditions, suggesting an enhanced ability to adapt ecologically to a drying environment.
doi:10.1111/ele.13243 pmid:30828955 fatcat:lfnwzoz4abautmhidtwgpadyim
Open Access
Citation

Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Imma Oliveras, Sami Rifai, Sophie Fauset, Stephen Adu-Bredu, Kofi Affum-Baffoe, Timothy R. Baker, Ted R. Feldpausch, Agne Gvozdevaite, Wannes Hubau, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Simon L. Lewis, Sam Moore, Ülo Niinemets, Theresa Peprah, Oliver L. Phillips, Kasia Ziemińska, Brian Enquist, Yadvinder Malhi, Josep Penuelas. "Drier tropical forests are susceptible to functional changes in response to a long-term drought." Ecology Letters 22.5 (2019) 855-865