Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities
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Author list: Declan L. M. Cooper, Simon L. Lewis, Martin J. P. Sullivan, Paulo I. Prado, Hans ter Steege, Nicolas Barbier, Ferry Slik, Bonaventure Sonké, Corneille E. N. Ewango, Stephen Adu-Bredu, Kofi Affum-Baffoe, Daniel P. P. de Aguiar, Manuel Augusto Ahuite Reategui, Shin-Ichiro Aiba, Bianca Weiss Albuquerque, Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos, Alfonso Alonso, Christian A. Amani, Dário Dantas do Amaral, Iêda Leão do Amaral, Ana Andrade, Ires Paula de Andrade Miranda, Ilondea B. Angoboy, Alejandro Araujo-Murakami, Nicolás Castaño Arboleda, Luzmila Arroyo, Peter Ashton, Gerardo A. Aymard C, Cláudia Baider, Timothy R. Baker, Michael Philippe Bessike Balinga, Henrik Balslev, Lindsay F. Banin, Olaf S. Bánki, Chris Baraloto, Edelcilio Marques Barbosa, Flávia Rodrigues Barbosa, Jos Barlow, Jean-Francois Bastin, Hans Beeckman, Serge Begne, Natacha Nssi Bengone, Erika Berenguer, Nicholas Berry, Robert Bitariho, Pascal Boeckx, Jan Bogaert, Bernard Bonyoma, Patrick Boundja, Nils Bourland, Faustin Boyemba Bosela, Fabian Brambach, Roel Brienen, David F. R. P. Burslem, José Luís Camargo, Wegliane Campelo, Angela Cano, Sasha Cárdenas, Dairon Cárdenas López, Rainiellen de Sá Carpanedo, Yrma Andreina Carrero Márquez, Fernanda Antunes Carvalho, Luisa Fernanda Casas, Hernán Castellanos, Carolina V. Castilho, Carlos Cerón, Colin A. Chapman, Jerome Chave, Phourin Chhang, Wanlop Chutipong, et al.
Publisher: Nature Research
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Nature (0028-0836)
Volume number: 625
Issue number: 7996
Start page: 728
End page: 734
Number of pages: 7
ISSN: 0028-0836
eISSN: 1476-4687
Languages: English-Great Britain (EN-GB)
Abstract
Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations 1–6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories 7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees. © 2024, The Author(s).
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