Relating Tree Physiology to Past and Future Changes in Tropical Rainforest Tree Communities |
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| Authors: | Thomas a Kursar |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, U.S.A |
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| Abstract: | Predicting future changes in tropical rainforest tree communities requires a good understanding of past changes as well as a knowledge of the physiology, ecology and population biology of extant species. Climate change during the next hundred years will be more similar to climate fluctuations that have occurred in the last few thousand years and of a much smaller magnitude than the extent of climate change experienced during last glaciation or at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. Unfortunately, the extent to which tropical rainforest tree communities have changed during the last few thousand years has been little investigated. As a consequence we lack the detailed evidence for population and range shifts of individual tropical species resulting from climate change analogous to the evidence available for temperate zone forests. Some evidence suggests that the rate of tropical forest change in the last several thousand years may have been high. If so, then CO2 increases and the likely alterations in temperature, forest turnover rate, rainfall, or severe droughts may drive substantial future forest change. How can we predict or model the effects of climate change on a highly diverse tree community? Explanations for the regulation of tropical tree populations often invoke tree physiology or processes that are subject to physiological regulation such as herbivory, pathology or seed production. In order to incorporate such considerations into climate change models, the physiology of a very diverse tree community must be understood. My work has focused on simplifying this diversity by categorizing the shade-tolerant species into functional physiological groups. Most species and most individual trees are shade-tolerant species, gap-requiring species being relatively uncommon. Additionally, in a regenerating gap most of the individuals are shade-tolerant species that established before gap formation. Despite the fact that the shade-tolerant species are of major ecological importance, their comparative physiology has received little attention. I have found that shade-tolerant species differ substantially in their responses to light flecks, treefall light gaps and drought. Furthermore, among phylogenetically unrelated species, these differences in physiology can be predicted from leaf lifetime. These results provide a general framework for understanding the mechanics of tropical rainforests from a physiological perspective that can be used to model their responses to climate change. |
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