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Soil-associated drivers of plant traits and functional composition in Atlantic Forest coastal tree communities
The severe deforestation of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and the increasing effects of climate change underscore the need to understand how tree species respond to climate and edaphic factors. To identify the most important environmental drivers of coastal Atlantic Forest diversity and functional composition, we studied 42 plots of coastal Atlantic Forest (restinga), which has a high diversity of plant communities and spans strong environmental gradients. We examined how forest physiognomy and functional composition respond to changes in the environment, hydraulic, and soil properties. We tested different hypotheses relating the roles of nutrients and soil water availability in driving shifts in tropical forest diversity and functioning. We collected wood samples and leaves from ˜85% of the plant species identified in the forest inventory and estimated the community-weighted tree height, aboveground biomass, basal area of individual plants, specific leaf area, wood density, and the total tree biomass per community by the sum of all trees’ aboveground biomass per plot. We measured water table depth and 24 physicochemical soil parameters. Hypotheses relating to these factors were formalized via both generalized additive models and piecewise structural equation models and null models of community assembly. Increasing drought, as reflected by increasing water table depth, coarse sand, and soil concentration of aluminum (>6 cmol/kg), was found to be a primary driver of shifts in all measured functional traits. Water table depth was found to be the main environmental driver of restinga species diversity, but shifts in species richness were largely decoupled from functional richness and functional dispersion. Our results suggest that decreases in soil water availability are a central driver of local phenotype–environment matching and that increasing water limitation increases the role of environmental filtering on multiple traits. Our results show that drought leads to a strong convergence (standardized effect size < −1.95) in forest function and leads to shifts to smaller statured forest in particular. These findings reveal important differences in the drivers of forest structure and functioning, suggesting that changes in local spatial variation in soil and moisture variables will be a central issue in restinga management and conservation. © 2021 The Authors.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]
An\ue1lise comparativa da anatomia foliar de Melastomataceae em ambiente de vereda e cerrado sensu stricto
Este trabalho descreve a anatomia das lâminas foliares de três espécies de Melastomataceae, Lavoisiera bergii Cogn., Macairea radula (Bonpl.) DC. e Trembleya parviflora (D. Don) Cogn. que estão colonizando a zona alagável e aberta de fundo de vereda e de M. radula e T. parviflora que ocorrem no cerrado sensu stricto da Estação Ecológica de Águas Emendadas, Planaltina/DF. Os dados estruturais mostrados pelas três espécies indicam escleromorfia com características particulares a cada uma delas, como projeções nas células epidérmicas de L. bergii, diferentes tipos e localização de emergências formadas por esclereídes em L. bergii e M. radula, e evaginações na epiderme de T. parviflora. A caracterização anatômica das folhas de M. radula e T. parviflora não difere entre os ambientes. No entanto, as lâminas foliares dos indivíduos encontrados na vereda apresentaram plasticidade com valores significativamente (P< 0,05) maiores para espessura do mesofilo e do parênquima para massa foliar e massa foliar específica em relação aos indivíduos do cerrado sensu stricto. Esta relação é inversa para valores de área foliar específica. A capacidade de apresentar plasticidade estrutural, juntamente com a escleromorfia, pode ter sido relevante para o comportamento invasivo destas espécies na zona de fundo da vereda como destacado na discussão. Além deste ponto, o texto também apresenta uma breve discussão sobre outros aspectos relacionados à importância de estruturas anatômicas na taxonomia e ecologia destas espécies