TY - JOUR
T1 - A taxonomic comparison of local habitat niches of tropical trees
AU - Baldeck, Claire A.
AU - Kembel, Steven W.
AU - Harms, Kyle E.
AU - Yavitt, Joseph B.
AU - John, Robert
AU - Turner, Benjamin L.
AU - Chuyong, George B.
AU - Kenfack, David
AU - Thomas, Duncan W.
AU - Madawala, Sumedha
AU - Gunatilleke, Nimal
AU - Gunatilleke, Savitri
AU - Bunyavejchewin, Sarayudh
AU - Kiratiprayoon, Somboon
AU - Yaacob, Adzmi
AU - Nur Supardi, Mohd N.
AU - Valencia, Renato
AU - Navarrete, Hugo
AU - Davies, Stuart J.
AU - Hubbell, Stephen P.
AU - Dalling, James W.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments We thank the Center for tropical Forest science for their collection and organization of the tree census data used in this study. the BCI forest dynamics research project was made possible by national science Foundation grants to stephen P. hub-bell: DeB-0640386, DeB-0425651, DeB-0346488, DeB-0129874, DeB-00753102, DeB-9909347, DeB-9615226, DeB-9615226, DeB-9405933, DeB-9221033, DeB-9100058, DeB-8906869, DeB-8605042, DeB-8206992, DeB-7922197, support from the Center for tropical Forest science, the smithsonian tropical research Institute, the John D. and Catherine t. macarthur Foundation, the mellon Foundation, the small World Institute Fund. Funding for soils work was provided by the us national science Foundation grants DeB 0211004, DeB 0211115, DeB 0212284, DeB 0212818, and OIse 0314581, the soils initiative of the smithsonian tropical research Institute, and a CtFs grant to cover collection and extraction of soils from Korup. the experiments comply with the current laws of the countries in which they were performed. We also thank editor Walter Carson and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript.
PY - 2013/12
Y1 - 2013/12
N2 - The integration of ecology and evolutionary biology requires an understanding of the evolutionary lability in species' ecological niches. For tropical trees, specialization for particular soil resource and topographic conditions is an important part of the habitat niche, influencing the distributions of individual species and overall tree community structure at the local scale. However, little is known about how these habitat niches are related to the evolutionary history of species. We assessed the relationship between taxonomic rank and tree species' soil resource and topographic niches in eight large (24-50 ha) tropical forest dynamics plots. Niche overlap values, indicating the similarity of two species' distributions along soil or topographic axes, were calculated for all pairwise combinations of co-occurring tree species at each study site. Congeneric species pairs often showed greater niche overlap (i.e., more similar niches) than non-congeneric pairs along both soil and topographic axes, though significant effects were found for only five sites based on Mantel tests. No evidence for taxonomic effects was found at the family level. Our results indicate that local habitat niches of trees exhibit varying degrees of phylogenetic signal at different sites, which may have important ramifications for the phylogenetic structure of these communities.
AB - The integration of ecology and evolutionary biology requires an understanding of the evolutionary lability in species' ecological niches. For tropical trees, specialization for particular soil resource and topographic conditions is an important part of the habitat niche, influencing the distributions of individual species and overall tree community structure at the local scale. However, little is known about how these habitat niches are related to the evolutionary history of species. We assessed the relationship between taxonomic rank and tree species' soil resource and topographic niches in eight large (24-50 ha) tropical forest dynamics plots. Niche overlap values, indicating the similarity of two species' distributions along soil or topographic axes, were calculated for all pairwise combinations of co-occurring tree species at each study site. Congeneric species pairs often showed greater niche overlap (i.e., more similar niches) than non-congeneric pairs along both soil and topographic axes, though significant effects were found for only five sites based on Mantel tests. No evidence for taxonomic effects was found at the family level. Our results indicate that local habitat niches of trees exhibit varying degrees of phylogenetic signal at different sites, which may have important ramifications for the phylogenetic structure of these communities.
KW - Community assembly
KW - Niche overlap
KW - Phylogenetic community structure
KW - Phylogenetic signal
KW - Tropical forest
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U2 - 10.1007/s00442-013-2709-5
DO - 10.1007/s00442-013-2709-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 23851985
AN - SCOPUS:84888316672
SN - 0029-8519
VL - 173
SP - 1491
EP - 1498
JO - Oecologia
JF - Oecologia
IS - 4
ER -