TY - INPR N1 - Ecology Letters© 2023 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. JF - Ecology Letters PB - Wiley A1 - Matas-Granados, L A1 - Draper, FC A1 - Cayuela, L A1 - de Aledo, JG A1 - Arellano, G A1 - Saadi, CB A1 - Baker, TR A1 - Phillips, OL A1 - Honorio Coronado, EN A1 - Ruokolainen, K A1 - García-Villacorta, R A1 - Roucoux, KH A1 - Guèze, M A1 - Sandoval, EV A1 - Fine, PVA A1 - Amasifuen Guerra, CA A1 - Gomez, RZ A1 - Stevenson Diaz, PR A1 - Monteagudo-Mendoza, A A1 - Martinez, RV A1 - Socolar, JB A1 - Disney, M A1 - del Aguila Pasquel, J A1 - Llampazo, GF A1 - Arenas, JV A1 - Huaymacari, JR A1 - Grandez Rios, JM A1 - Macía, MJ KW - abundance-occupancy relationship KW - dispersal limitation KW - dominant species KW - ecological specialization KW - environmental filters KW - generalist KW - spatial aggregation KW - specialist KW - species competition KW - tropical tree communities Y1 - 2023/12/18/ SN - 1461-023X TI - Understanding different dominance patterns in western Amazonian forests AV - public N2 - Dominance of neotropical tree communities by a few species is widely documented, but dominant trees show a variety of distributional patterns still poorly understood. Here, we used 503 forest inventory plots (93,719 individuals ?2.5 cm diameter, 2609 species) to explore the relationships between local abundance, regional frequency and spatial aggregation of dominant species in four main habitat types in western Amazonia. Although the abundance-occupancy relationship is positive for the full dataset, we found that among dominant Amazonian tree species, there is a strong negative relationship between local abundance and regional frequency and/or spatial aggregation across habitat types. Our findings suggest an ecological trade-off whereby dominant species can be locally abundant (local dominants) or regionally widespread (widespread dominants), but rarely both (oligarchs). Given the importance of dominant species as drivers of diversity and ecosystem functioning, unravelling different dominance patterns is a research priority to direct conservation efforts in Amazonian forests. ID - discovery10184930 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.14351 ER -