29
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Trait-based community assembly of understory palms along a soil nutrient gradient in a lower montane tropical forest.

      1 , ,   ,
      Oecologia
      Springer Nature

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Two opposing niche processes have been shown to shape the relationship between ecological traits and species distribution patterns: habitat filtering and competitive exclusion. Habitat filtering is expected to select for similar traits among coexisting species that share similar habitat conditions, whereas competitive exclusion is expected to limit the ecological similarity of coexisting species leading to trait differentiation. Here, we explore how functional traits vary among 19 understory palm species that differ in their distribution across a gradient of soil resource availability in lower montane forest in western Panama. We found evidence that habitat filtering influences species distribution patterns and shifts community-wide and intraspecific trait values. Differences in trait values among sites were more strongly related to soil nutrient availability than to variation in light or rainfall. Soil nutrient availability explained a significant amount of variation in site mean trait values for 4 of 15 functional traits. Site mean values of leaf nitrogen and phosphorus increased 37 and 64%, respectively, leaf carbon:nitrogen decreased 38%, and specific leaf area increased 29% with increasing soil nutrient availability. For Geonoma cuneata, the only species occurring at all sites, leaf phosphorus increased 34% and nitrogen:phosphorus decreased 42% with increasing soil nutrients. In addition to among-site variation, most morphological and leaf nutrient traits differed among coexisting species within sites, suggesting these traits may be important for niche differentiation. Hence, a combination of habitat filtering due to turnover in species composition and intraspecific variation along a soil nutrient gradient and site-specific niche differentiation among co-occurring species influences understory palm community structure in this lower montane forest.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Oecologia
          Oecologia
          Springer Nature
          1432-1939
          0029-8549
          Feb 2012
          : 168
          : 2
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama. kanderse@life.illinois.edu
          Article
          10.1007/s00442-011-2112-z
          21894517
          a18bd17b-2d45-4630-aebf-913794b4c1dd
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article