Matas-Granados, L;
Draper, FC;
Cayuela, L;
de Aledo, JG;
Arellano, G;
Saadi, CB;
Baker, TR;
... Macía, MJ; + view all
(2023)
Understanding different dominance patterns in western Amazonian forests.
Ecology Letters
10.1111/ele.14351.
(In press).
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Abstract
Dominance of neotropical tree communities by a few species is widely documented, but dominant trees show a variety of distributional patterns still poorly understood. Here, we used 503 forest inventory plots (93,719 individuals ≥2.5 cm diameter, 2609 species) to explore the relationships between local abundance, regional frequency and spatial aggregation of dominant species in four main habitat types in western Amazonia. Although the abundance-occupancy relationship is positive for the full dataset, we found that among dominant Amazonian tree species, there is a strong negative relationship between local abundance and regional frequency and/or spatial aggregation across habitat types. Our findings suggest an ecological trade-off whereby dominant species can be locally abundant (local dominants) or regionally widespread (widespread dominants), but rarely both (oligarchs). Given the importance of dominant species as drivers of diversity and ecosystem functioning, unravelling different dominance patterns is a research priority to direct conservation efforts in Amazonian forests.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Understanding different dominance patterns in western Amazonian forests |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/ele.14351 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.14351 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Ecology Letters© 2023 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | abundance-occupancy relationship, dispersal limitation, dominant species, ecological specialization, environmental filters, generalist, spatial aggregation, specialist, species competition, tropical tree communities |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10184930 |
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