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Intraspecific trait variation and species turnover in successional tropical forests: assessing trait imputation for community-weighted means

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Abstract

Accounting for intraspecific trait variation (ITV) is crucial to plant ecology for vegetation modeling efforts. ITV can be substantial; however, it remains unclear how ITV influences community-weighted mean (CWM) trait estimates. We use leaf and root trait data from 423 trees of 72 species from 15 Angiosperm families in combination with community data from 164 25 × 25 m plots comprising 580 species to evaluate the contributions of ITV and compositional turnover to CWMs, comparing unlogged primary tropical forest to selectively logged and clear-cut secondary tropical forest. We also examine the effect of imputing missing trait values using phylogenetic generalized linear modeling (PhyloPars) on CWMs. For six of the seven traits, ITV negatively covaried with community compositional turnover to generate larger CWM differences between forest types than observed if ITV was not integrated. For example, plot average-weighted mean specific leaf area was 10.7 and 10.4 m2 kg−1 for primary and secondary forests, not accounting for ITV, but shifted to 9.8 and 11.1 m2 kg−1 after doing so. Our results from 72 species assemblages were largely consistent with results using phylogenetically imputed traits for the entire community. The contribution of ITV to CWMs ranged from 25 to 75%, with ITV, not species turnover, driving CWM trait variation among successional forest types. CWM trait estimates became more conservative with forest age, whereas ITV for many traits showed an opposing acquisitive shift (i.e., increasing in leaf area or root length) and because of negative covariation between ITV and species turnover, weighted mean trait differences between successional forest types increased.

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Data availability

The functional trait data used in this study are archived on figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7996328.v4. The tree demographic data are available from Dr. Han Xu at the Chinese Academy of Forestry upon request.

Code availability

All code used is freely available as part of R. The code for the trait flex ANOVA function is available in the supplemental material of Lepš et al. (2011). Example code for the analyses and creation of figures is available from JAH upon request.

Abbreviations

AWM:

Assemblage (i.e., partial community)-weighted mean

CWM:

Community-weighted mean

ITV:

Intraspecific trait variation

JFL:

Jianfengling

pGLM:

Phylogenetic generalized linear model

RBI:

Root branching intensity (in tips cm−1)

RTD:

Root tissue density (in g cm−3)

SLA:

Specific leaf area (in m2 kg−1)

SRL:

Specific root length (in m g−1)

WD:

Wood density (in g cm−3)

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Acknowledgements

We thank Jan Lepš and the anonymous reviewers for comments that improved this work. We thank Sheyla Santana from the FIU GIS lab for help in producing Figure 1. We acknowledge the assistance of the following people who helped in the field and with the processing of plant samples: Shaojun Ling, Yaxin Xie, Jaming Wang, Siqi Yang, Wenguang Tang, Shitaing Ma, Qiqi Zhang, and Jiazhu Shi. Professor Yu from the Jianfengling Forest Bureau provided taxonomic field identification assistance.

Funding

Partial financial support was received from CTFS-ForestGEO at the Smithsonian. We are grateful for many small personal donations that funded the soil analyses (http://www.experiment.com/chinaroots).

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Author notes

  1. J. Aaron Hogan

    Present address: Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Environment, Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    J. Aaron Hogan & Christopher Baraloto

  2. Research Institute of Tropical Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Longdong, Guangzhou, 510520, China

    Han Xu

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Contributions

JAH and CB designed the study, JAH and HX collected the data, and JAH analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed intellectually and aided in the editing of manuscript drafts.

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Correspondence to J. Aaron Hogan.

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Supplementary file1 (PDF 331 KB) JFL Transect vs. Small Plots—Soil Analyses: a literate statistical document comparing soils collected along the transect (at the base of tree individuals, where roots were harvested) to soils sampled in the network of small plots

11258_2023_1314_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplementary file2 (PDF 363 KB) JFL Intraspecific Variability Effects—Assemblage-Weighted Means: a literate statistical document implementing the Trait Flex ANOVAS for the assemblage-weighted mean analysis, which uses the truncated community of 72 species for which root and leaf functional traits were directly measured

11258_2023_1314_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Supplementary file3 (PDF 467 KB) JFL Intraspecific Variability Effects—Community-Weighted Means: a literate statistical document describing the imputation of functional traits and re-implementing the Trait Flex ANOVAS with pGLM-imputed trait matrices (using PhyloPars) for complete CWM analysis, which uses the entire plant community (580 species) for the small plots at JFL

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Hogan, J.A., Xu, H. & Baraloto, C. Intraspecific trait variation and species turnover in successional tropical forests: assessing trait imputation for community-weighted means. Plant Ecol 224, 463–477 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-023-01314-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-023-01314-4

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