Dominance and rarity in tree communities across the globe: patterns, predictors and threats

• Autores: Hordijk, Iris; Bialic-Murphy, Lalasia; Lauber, Thomas; Routh, Devin; Poorter, Lourens; Rivers, Malin C.; Steege, Hans ter; Liang, Jingjing; Reich, Peter B.; de-Miguel, Sergio; Peri, Pablo Luis; Crowther, Thomas W.
• Año de publicación: 2024
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Fuente: Global Ecology and Biogeography 33 (10) : e13889. (October 2024)
• Materia: Trees; Community Composition; Forests; Abundance; Árboles; Composición de la Comunidad; Bosques; Abundancia; Dominance; Environmental Predictors; Macroecology; Species Abundance; Dominancia; Predictores Ambientales; Macroecología; Abundancia de Especies; Species Population Threats; Amenazas a la Población de Especies
• Institución: Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria

Aim. Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the following research questions: (1) What are the patterns of dominance and rarity in tree communities? (2) Which ecological and anthropogenic factors predict these patterns? And (3) what is the extinction risk of locally dominant and rare tree species?. Location: Global. Time period: 1990–2017. Major taxa studied: Trees. Methods: We used 1.2 million forest plots and quantified local tree dominance as the relative plot basal area of the single most dominant species and local rarity as the percentage of species that contribute together to the least 10% of plot basal area. We mapped global community dominance and rarity using machine learning models and evaluated the ecological and anthropogenic predictors with linear models. Extinction risk, for example threatened status, of geographically widespread dominant and rare species was evaluated. Results: Community dominance and rarity show contrasting latitudinal trends, with boreal forests having high levels of dominance and tropical forests having high levels of rarity. Increasing annual precipitation reduces community dominance, probably because precipitation is related to an increase in tree density and richness. Additionally, stand age is positively related to community dominance, due to stem diameter increase of the most dominant species. Surprisingly, we find that locally dominant and rare species, which are geographically widespread in our data, have an equally high rate of elevated extinction due to declining populations through large-scale land degradation. Main conclusions: By linking patterns and predictors of community dominance and rarity to extinction risk, our results suggest that also widespread species should be considered in large-scale management and conservation practices.
EEA Santa Cruz
Fil: Hordijk, Iris. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Institute of Integrative Biology; Suiza
Fil: Hordijk, Iris. Wageningen University and Research; Países Bajos
Fil: Bialic-Murphy, Lalasia. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Institute of Integrative Biology; Suiza
Fil: Lauber, Thomas. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Institute of Integrative Biology; Suiza
Fil: Routh, Devin. University of Zürich. Department of Geography; Suiza
Fil: Routh, Devin. University of Zürich. Department of Science; Suiza
Fil: Poorter, Lourens. Wageningen University and Research; Países Bajos
Fil: Rivers, Malin C. Botanic Gardens Conservation International; Reino Unido
Fil: Steege, Hans ter. Naturalis Biodiversity Centre. Leiden; Países Bajos
Fil: Steege, Hans ter. Utrecht University Quantitative Biodiversity Dynamics. Department of Biology; Países Bajos
Fil: Liang, Jingjing. Purdue University. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources; Estados Unidos
Fil: Reich, Peter B. University of Minnesota. Department of Forest Resources; Estados Unidos
Fil: Reich, Peter B. Western Sydney University. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment; Australia.
Fil: de-Miguel, Sergio. University of Lleida. Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences and Engineering; España
Fil: de-Miguel, Sergio. Joint Research Unit CTFC – AGROTECNIO – CERCA; España
Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Santa Cruz; Argentina.
Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral; Argentina.
Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.
Fil: Crowther, Thomas W. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Institute of Integrative Biology; Suiza