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Climate sensitive size-dependent survival in tropical trees

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 1436–1442 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Survival rates of large trees determine forest biomass dynamics. Survival rates of small trees have been linked to mechanisms that maintain biodiversity across tropical forests. How species survival rates change with size offers insight into the links between biodiversity and ecosystem function across tropical forests. We tested patterns of size-dependent tree survival across the tropics using data from 1,781 species and over 2 million individuals to assess whether tropical forests can be characterized by size-dependent life-history survival strategies. We found that species were classifiable into four ‘survival modes’ that explain life-history variation that shapes carbon cycling and the relative abundance within forests. Frequently collected functional traits, such as wood density, leaf mass per area and seed mass, were not generally predictive of the survival modes of species. Mean annual temperature and cumulative water deficit predicted the proportion of biomass of survival modes, indicating important links between evolutionary strategies, climate and carbon cycling. The application of survival modes in demographic simulations predicted biomass change across forest sites. Our results reveal globally identifiable size-dependent survival strategies that differ across diverse systems in a consistent way. The abundance of survival modes and interaction with climate ultimately determine forest structure, carbon storage in biomass and future forest trajectories.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the workflow for this analysis.
Fig. 2: Survival probability as a function of DBH for each of the four identified survival modes.
Fig. 3: Mean annual aboveground carbon loss to mortality.
Fig. 4: In general, traits do not map strongly onto the four survival modes.
Fig. 5: Average annual individual growth rate by survival mode.
Fig. 6: Observed versus predicted biomass.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the many people involved in establishing and maintaining all the plots utilized in these analyses. A detailed list of funding sources for each plot is available in the Supplementary Information. The development of this project benefited from ForestGEO workshops in 2015, 2016 and 2017 (NSF DEB-1046113 to S.J.D.). Contributions by C.X., J.Q.C., S.J.D. and N.M. were supported by the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE-Tropics) project, funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. S.M.M. was partially funded by NSF - EF1137366. D.J.J. was supported by Los Alamos National Laboratory (Director’s Post-doctoral Fellowship).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth and Environmental Science, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Daniel J. Johnson & Chonggang Xu

  2. School of Forest Resources and Conservation, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Daniel J. Johnson

  3. Forest Global Earth Observatory, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, USA

    Jessica Needham & Sean M. McMahon

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Elias C. Massoud

  5. Forest Global Earth Observatory, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    Stuart J. Davies & David Kenfack

  6. Forest Global Earth Observatory, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, VA, USA

    Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira

  7. Research Office, Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Bangkok, Thailand

    Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin

  8. Climate and Ecosystems Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jeffery Q. Chambers

  9. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan

    Chia-Hao Chang-Yang

  10. Department of Life Science, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan

    Jyh-Min Chiang

  11. Department of Botany and Plant Physiology, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon

    George B. Chuyong

  12. Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA

    Richard Condit

  13. Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, USDA Forest Service, Hilo, HI, USA

    Susan Cordell & Christian P. Giardina

  14. Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Kepong, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

    Christine Fletcher, Abdul Rahman Kassim & Musalmah Nasardin

  15. Department of Geography, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Thomas W. Giambelluca

  16. Department of Botany, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

    Nimal Gunatilleke & Savitri Gunatilleke

  17. Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Chang-Fu Hsieh

  18. Center for Tropical Forest Science-Forest Global Earth Observatory, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama, Republic of Panama

    Stephen Hubbell

  19. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Faith Inman-Narahari & Creighton M. Litton

  20. Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Masatoshi Katabuchi

  21. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Shawn Lum

  22. Sarawak Forestry Department, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

    Mohizah Mohamad & Sylvester Tan

  23. Institute of Biology, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines

    Perry S. Ong

  24. Department of Biology, University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI, USA

    Rebecca Ostertag

  25. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Lawren Sack

  26. Department of Biology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Nathan G. Swenson & Maria Natalia Umaña

  27. National Dong Hwa University, Hualian, Taiwan

    I Fang Sun

  28. School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, USA

    Duncan W. Thomas

  29. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Bush Estate, Penicuik, Midlothian, UK

    Jill Thompson

  30. Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Maria Uriarte

  31. Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

    Renato Valencia

  32. Far Eastern University, Manila, Philippines

    Sandra Yap

  33. Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Studies, College of Natural Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico

    Jess Zimmerman

  34. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Nate G. McDowell

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  1. Daniel J. Johnson
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Contributions

D.J.J., J.N., C.X., N.M. and S.M.M. conceived and designed the analyses, D.J.J. and J.N. performed the analyses, D.J.J., C.X., S.J.D., N.M., J.N., S.M.M. wrote the initial draft. E.C.M. and C.X. provided FATES simulations. K.J.A.-T., S.B., C.H.C.-Y., J.Q.C., J.-M.C., G.B.C., R.C., S.C., C.F., F.I.-N., C.P.G., S.G., N.G., T.W.G., C.-F.H., S.H., A.R.K., M.K., D.K., C.M.L., S.L., E.C.M., M.M., N.G.M., P.S.O., R.O., L.S., N.G.S., I.F.S., S.T., D.W.T., J.T., M.N.U., M.U., R.V., S.Y. and J.K.Z. contributed data, provided site-specific information and helped revise the manuscript. All authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Daniel J. Johnson.

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Johnson, D.J., Needham, J., Xu, C. et al. Climate sensitive size-dependent survival in tropical trees. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1436–1442 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0626-z

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