Premium
Negative trait‐based association between abundance of nitrogen‐fixing trees and long‐term tropical forest biomass accumulation
Author(s) -
Currey Bryce,
Oatham Michael P.,
Brookshire E. N. Jack
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.452
H-Index - 181
eISSN - 1365-2745
pISSN - 0022-0477
DOI - 10.1111/1365-2745.13524
Subject(s) - biomass (ecology) , abundance (ecology) , trait , biology , productivity , ecology , forest dynamics , tropics , range (aeronautics) , tropical forest , agronomy , agroforestry , materials science , computer science , economics , composite material , macroeconomics , programming language
Abstract Plant functional traits are thought to drive biomass production and biogeochemical cycling in tropical forests, but it remains unclear how nitrogen (N)‐fixing legumes influence the functional traits of neighbouring trees and forest‐wide biomass dynamics. Further, the degree to which effects of N‐fixers are density‐dependent and may depend on stem size and spatial scale remains largely unknown. Here, we examine 30 years of stem demography data for ~20,000 trees in a lowland tropical forest in Trinidad that span a wide range of functional traits thought to drive above‐ground biomass (AGB) dynamics. These forests show positive but decreasing long‐term net AGB accumulation resulting from constant average productivity but increasing mortality of non‐fixing trees over time. We find that high abundance of N‐fixing trees is associated with compositional shifts in non‐fixer functional traits that confer lower competitive performance and biomass accumulation. Across tree size classes, most interactions between N‐fixers and non‐fixers were negative, density‐dependent, and strongest at smaller spatial scales. Synthesis . Overall, our findings suggest that local trait‐based interactions between N‐fixing and non‐fixing trees can influence long‐term carbon accumulation in tropical forests.