Hordijk, Iris;
Bialic-Murphy, Lalasia;
Lauber, Thomas;
Routh, Devin;
Poorter, Lourens;
Rivers, Malin C;
ter Steege, Hans;
... Crowther, Thomas W; + view all
(2024)
Dominance and rarity in tree communities across the globe: Patterns, predictors and threats.
Global Ecology and Biogeography
, 33
(10)
, Article e13889. 10.1111/geb.13889.
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Abstract
Aim: Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the following research questions: (1) What are the patterns of dominance and rarity in tree communities? (2) Which ecological and anthropogenic factors predict these patterns? And (3) what is the extinction risk of locally dominant and rare tree species?. Location: Global. Time period: 1990–2017. Major taxa studied: Trees. Methods: We used 1.2 million forest plots and quantified local tree dominance as the relative plot basal area of the single most dominant species and local rarity as the percentage of species that contribute together to the least 10% of plot basal area. We mapped global community dominance and rarity using machine learning models and evaluated the ecological and anthropogenic predictors with linear models. Extinction risk, for example threatened status, of geographically widespread dominant and rare species was evaluated. Results: Community dominance and rarity show contrasting latitudinal trends, with boreal forests having high levels of dominance and tropical forests having high levels of rarity. Increasing annual precipitation reduces community dominance, probably because precipitation is related to an increase in tree density and richness. Additionally, stand age is positively related to community dominance, due to stem diameter increase of the most dominant species. Surprisingly, we find that locally dominant and rare species, which are geographically widespread in our data, have an equally high rate of elevated extinction due to declining populations through large-scale land degradation. Main conclusions: By linking patterns and predictors of community dominance and rarity to extinction risk, our results suggest that also widespread species should be considered in large-scale management and conservation practices.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Dominance and rarity in tree communities across the globe: Patterns, predictors and threats |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/geb.13889 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13889 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Global Ecology and Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
| Keywords: | community, dominance, environmental predictors, forests, macroecology, rarity, species abundance, species population threats |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207182 |
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