Dominance and rarity in tree communities across the globe: Patterns, predictors and threats

Iris Hordijk, Lalasia Bialic-Murphy, Thomas Lauber, Devin Routh, Lourens Poorter, Malin C. Rivers, Hans ter Steege, Jingjing Liang, Peter B. Reich, Sergio de-Miguel, Gert Jan Nabuurs, Javier G.P. Gamarra, Han Y.H. Chen, Mo Zhou, Susan K. Wiser, Hans Pretzsch, Alain Paquette, Nicolas Picard, Bruno Hérault, Jean Francois BastinGiorgio Alberti, Meinrad Abegg, Yves C. Adou Yao, Angelica M. Almeyda Zambrano, Braulio V. Alvarado, Esteban Alvarez-Davila, Patricia Alvarez-Loayza, Luciana F. Alves, Christian Ammer, Clara Antón-Fernández, Alejandro Araujo-Murakami, Luzmila Arroyo, Valerio Avitabile, Gerardo A. Aymard Corredor, Timothy Baker, Olaf Banki, Jorcely Barroso, Meredith L. Bastian, Luca Birigazzi, Philippe Birnbaum, Robert Bitariho, Pascal Boeckx, Frans Bongers, Olivier Bouriaud, Pedro H.S. Brancalion, Susanne Brandl, Roel Brienen, Eben N. Broadbent, Helge Bruelheide, Filippo Bussotti, Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Ricardo G. Cesar, Goran Cesljar, Robin Chazdon, Chelsea Chisholm, Emil Cienciala, Connie J. Clark, David B. Clar, Gabriel Colletta, David Coomes, Fernando Cornejo Valverde, Jose J. Corral-Rivas, Philip Crim, Jonathan Cumming, Selvadurai Dayanandan, André L. de Gasper, Mathieu Decuyper, Géraldine Derroire, Ben DeVries, Ilija Djordjevic, Amaral Iêda, Aurélie Dourdain, Jiri Dolezal, Nestor Laurier Engone Obiang, Brian Enquist, Teresa Eyre, Adandé Belarmain Fandohan, Tom M. Fayle, Leandro V. Ferreira, Ted R. Feldpausch, Leena Finér, Markus Fischer, Christine Fletcher, Lorenzo Frizzera, Damiano Gianelle, Henry B. Glick, David Harris, Andrew Hector, Andreas Hemp, Geerten Hengeveld, John Herbohn, Annika Hillers, Eurídice N. Honorio Coronado, Cang Hui, Hyunkook Cho, Thomas Ibanez, Ilbin Jung, Nobuo Imai, Andrzej M. Jagodzinski, Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Vivian Johannsen, Carlos A. Joly, Tommaso Jucker, Viktor Karminov, Kuswata Kartawinata, Elizabeth Kearsley, David Kenfack, Deborah Kennard, Sebastian Kepfer-Rojas, Gunnar Keppel, Mohammed Latif Khan, Timothy Killeen, Hyun Seok Kim, Kanehiro Kitayama, Michael Köhl, Henn Korjus, Florian Kraxner, Diana Laarmann, Mait Lang, Simon Lewis, Huicui Lu, Natalia Lukina, Brian Maitner, Yadvinder Malhi, Eric Marcon, Beatriz Schwantes Marimon, Ben Hur Marimon-Junior, Andrew Robert Marshall, Emanuel Martin, Olga Martynenko, Jorge A. Meave, Omar Melo-Cruz, Casimiro Mendoza, Cory Merow, Stanislaw Miscicki, Abel Monteagudo Mendoza, Vanessa Moreno, Sharif A. Mukul, Philip Mundhenk, Maria G. Nava-Miranda, David Neill, Victor Neldner, Radovan Nevenic, Michael Ngugi, Pascal A. Niklaus, Jacek Oleksyn, Petr Ontikov, Edgar Ortiz-Malavasi, Yude Pan, Alexander Parada-Gutierrez, Elena Parfenova, Minjee Park, Marc Parren, Narayanaswamy Parthasarathy, Pablo L. Peri, Sebastian Pfautsch, Oliver L. Phillips, Maria Teresa Piedade, Daniel Piotto, Nigel C.A. Pitman, Irina Polo, Axel Dalberg Poulsen, John R. Poulsen, Freddy Ramirez Arevalo, Zorayda Restrepo-Correa, Mirco Rodeghiero, Samir Rolim, Anand Roopsind, Francesco Rovero, Ervan Rutishauser, Purabi Saikia, Christian Salas-Eljatib, Peter Schall, Dmitry Schepaschenko, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen, Bernhard Schmid, Jochen Schöngart, Eric B. Searle, Vladimír Seben, Josep M. Serra-Diaz, Douglas Sheil, Anatoly Shvidenko, Javier Silva-Espejo, Marcos Silveira, James Singh, Plinio Sist, Ferry Slik, Bonaventure Sonké, Alexandre F. Souza, Krzysztof Stereńczak, Jens Christian Svenning, Miroslav Svoboda, Ben Swanepoel, Natalia Targhetta, Nadja Tchebakova, Raquel Thomas, Elena Tikhonova, Peter Umunay, Vladimir Usoltsev, Renato Valencia, Fernando Valladares, Fons van der Plas, Tran Van Do, Michael E. Van Nuland, Rodolfo Vasquez Martinez, Hans Verbeeck, Helder Viana, Alexander C. Vibrans, Simone Vieira, Klaus von Gadow, Hua Feng Wang, James Watson, Gijsbert D.A. Werner, Florian Wittmann, Verginia Wortel, Roderick Zagt, Tomasz Zawila-Niedzwiecki, Chunyu Zhang, Xiuhai Zhao, Zhi Xin Zhu, Irie Casimir Zo-Bi, Daniel S. Maynard, Thomas W. Crowther

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalGlobal Ecology and Biogeography
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Global Ecology and Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

  • community
  • dominance
  • environmental predictors
  • forests
  • macroecology
  • rarity
  • species abundance
  • species population threats

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