Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests

2025-03-05

Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Jesús

Rifai, Sami W

Deng, Xiongjie

Ter Steege, Hans

Thomson, Eleanor

Corral-Rivas, Jose Javier

Guimaraes, Aretha Franklin

Muller, Sandra

Klipel, Joice

Fauset, Sophie

Resende, Angelica F

Wallin, Göran

Joly, Carlos A

Abernethy, Katharine

Adu-Bredu, Stephen

Alexandre Silva, Celice

Almeida de Oliveira, Edmar

Almeida, Danilo R A

Alvarez-Davila, Esteban

Asner, Gregory P

Baker, Timothy R

Benchimol, Maíra

Bentley, Lisa Patrick

Berenguer, Erika

Blanc, Lilian

Bonal, Damien

Bordin, Kauane

Borges de Lima, Robson

Both, Sabine

Cabezas Duarte, Jaime

Cardoso, Domingos

De Lima, Haroldo C

Cavalheiro, Larissa

Cernusak, Lucas A

Dos Santos Prestes, Nayane Cristina C

Da Silva Zanzini, Antonio Carlos

Da Silva, Ricardo José

Dos Santos Alves da Silva, Robson

De Andrade Iguatemy, Mariana

De Sousa Oliveira, Tony César

Dechant, Benjamin

Derroire, Géraldine

Dexter, Kyle G

Rodrigues, Domingos J

Espírito-Santo, Mário

Fernandes Silva, Letícia

Ferreira Domingues, Tomas

Ferreira, Joice

Fragomeni Simon, Marcelo

Girardin, Cécile A J

Hérault, Bruno

Jeffery, Kathryn J

Kalpuzha Ashtamoorthy, Sreejith

Kavidapadinjattathil Sivadasan, Arunkumar

Klitgaard, Bente

Laurance, William F

Lima Dan, Maurício

Magnusson, William E

Campos-Filho, Eduardo Malta

Manoel dos Santos, Rubens

Manzatto, Angelo Gilberto

Silveira, Marcos

Marimon-Junior, Ben Hur

Martin, Roberta E

Mascia Vieira, Daniel Luis

Metzker, Thiago

Milliken, William

Moonlight, Peter

Moraes de Seixas, Marina Maria

Morandi, Paulo S

Muscarella, Robert

Nava-Miranda, María Guadalupe

Nyirambangutse, Brigitte

Oliveira Silva, Jhonathan

Menor Oliveras, Imma

Pena Rodrigues, Pablo José Francisco

Pereira de Oliveira, Cinthia

Pereira Zanzini, Lucas

Peres, Carlos A

Punjayil, Vignesh

Quesada, Carlos A

Réjou-Méchain, Maxime

Riutta, Terhi

Rivas-Torres, Gonzalo

Rosa, Clarissa

Salinas, Norma

Bergamin, Rodrigo Scarton

Marimon, Beatriz Schwantes

Shenkin, Alexander

Rodrigues, Priscyla Maria Silva

Simões Figueired, Axa Emanuelleo

Souza Garcia, Queila

Spósito, Tereza

Storck-Tonon, Danielle

Sullivan, Martin J P

Svátek, Martin

Vieira Santiago, Wagner Tadeu

Teh, Yit Arn

Theruvil Parambil Sivan, Prasad

Nascimento, Marcelo Trindade

Veenendaal, Elmar

Zo-Bi, Irie Casimir

Dago, Marie Ruth

Traoré, Soulemane

Patacca, Marco

Badouard, Vincyane

De Padua Chaves e Carvalho, Samuel

White, Lee J T

Zhang-Zheng, Huanyuan

Zibera, Etienne

Zwerts, Joeri Alexander

Burslem, David F R P

Silman, Miles

Chave, Jérôme

Enquist, Brian J

Barlow, Jos

Phillips, Oliver L

Coomes, David A

Malhi, Yadvinder

Journal Article

en

Publication

Nature Publishing Group

United Kingdom

10.1038/s41586-025-08663-2

une:1959.11/71352

Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy^1,2. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties³. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically⁴. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.

link

Nature, v.641, p. 129-136

1476-4687

0028-0836

129

136

Attribution 4.0 International