Winner–loser plant trait replacements in human-modified tropical forests

Pinho, Bruno, Melo, Felipe, ter Braak, Cajo, Bauman, David, Maréchaux, Isabelle, Tabarelli, Marcelo, Benchimol, Maíra, Arroyo-Rodriguez, Victor, Santos, Bráulio, Hawes, Joseph ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0053-2018 , Berenguer, Erika, Ferreira, Joice, Silveira, Juliana, Peres, Carlos, Rocha‐Santos, Larissa, Souza, Fernanda, Gonçalves-Souza, Thiago, Mariano-Neto, Eduardo, Faria, Deborah and Barlow, Jos (2024) Winner–loser plant trait replacements in human-modified tropical forests. Nature Ecology & Evolution .

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Abstract

Anthropogenic landscape modification may lead to the proliferation of a few species and the loss of many. Here we investigate mechanisms and functional consequences of this winner–loser replacement in six human-modified Amazonian and Atlantic Forest regions in Brazil using a causal inference framework. Combining floristic and functional trait data for 1,207 tree species across 271 forest plots, we find that forest loss consistently caused an increased dominance of low-density woods and small seeds dispersed by endozoochory (winner traits) and the loss of distinctive traits, such as extremely dense woods and large seeds dispersed by synzoochory (loser traits). Effects on leaf traits and maximum tree height were rare or inconsistent. The independent causal effects of landscape configuration were rare, but local degradation remained important in multivariate trait-disturbance relationships and exceeded the effects of forest loss in one Amazonian region. Our findings highlight that tropical forest loss and local degradation drive predictable functional changes to remaining tree assemblages and that certain traits are consistently associated with winners and losers across different regional contexts.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Nature Ecology & Evolution
Publisher:	Nature Research
ISSN:	2397-334X
Departments:	Institute of Science and Environment > Forestry and Conservation
Additional Information:	Joseph E. Hawes, Lecturer in Ecology and Conservation, Institute of Science and Environment, University of Cumbria, UK. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	12 Dec 2024 11:50
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 12:00
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8545

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