Produção Nacional
Revisado por pares
Patterns of nitrogen‐fixing tree abundance in forests across Asia and America
2019; Wiley; Volume: 107; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/1365-2745.13199
ISSN1365-2745
AutoresDuncan N. L. Menge, Ryan A. Chisholm, Stuart J. Davies, Kamariah Abu Salim, David Allen, Mauricio Alvaréz, Norm Bourg, Warren Y. Brockelman, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Nathalie Butt, Min Cao, Wirong Chanthorn, Wei‐Chun Chao, Keith Clay, Richard Condit, Susan Cordell, João Batista da Silva, H. S. Dattaraja, Ana Cristina Segalin de Andrade, Alexandre A. Oliveira, J. den Ouden, Michael Drescher, Christine Fletcher, Christian P. Giardina, C. V. S. Gunatilleke, I. A. U. N. Gunatilleke, Billy C. H. Hau, Fangliang He, Robert W. Howe, Chang‐Fu Hsieh, Stephen P. Hubbell, Faith Inman‐Narahari, Patrick A. Jansen, Daniel J. Johnson, Lee Sing Kong, Kamil Král, Chen‐Chia Ku, Jiangshan Lai, Andrew J. Larson, Xiankun Li, Yide Li, Luxiang Lin, Yiching Lin, Shirong Liu, Shawn Lum, James A. Lutz, Keping Ma, Yadvinder Malhi, Sean M. McMahon, William J. McShea, Xiangcheng Mi, Michael D. Morecroft, Jonathan A. Myers, Anuttara Nathalang, Vojtěch Novotný, Perry S. Ong, David A. Orwig, Rebecca Ostertag, Geoffrey G. Parker, Richard P. Phillips, K. Abd Rahman, Lawren Sack, Weiguo Sang, Guochun Shen, Ankur Shringi, Jessica Shue, Sheng‐Hsin Su, Raman Sukumar, I‐Fang Sun, H. S. Suresh, Sylvester Tan, Sean C. Thomas, Pagi S. Toko, Renato Valencia, Martha Isabel Vallejo, Alberto Vicentini, Tomáš Vrška, Bin Wang, Xihua Wang, George D. Weiblen, Amy Wolf, Han Xu, Sandra Yap, Li Zhu, Tak Fung,
Tópico(s)Species Distribution and Climate Change
ResumoAbstract Symbiotic nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees can provide large quantities of new N to ecosystems, but only if they are sufficiently abundant. The overall abundance and latitudinal abundance distributions of N‐fixing trees are well characterised in the Americas, but less well outside the Americas. Here, we characterised the abundance of N‐fixing trees in a network of forest plots spanning five continents, ~5,000 tree species and ~4 million trees. The majority of the plots (86%) were in America or Asia. In addition, we examined whether the observed pattern of abundance of N‐fixing trees was correlated with mean annual temperature and precipitation. Outside the tropics, N‐fixing trees were consistently rare in the forest plots we examined. Within the tropics, N‐fixing trees were abundant in American but not Asian forest plots (~7% versus ~1% of basal area and stems). This disparity was not explained by mean annual temperature or precipitation. Our finding of low N‐fixing tree abundance in the Asian tropics casts some doubt on recent high estimates of N fixation rates in this region, which do not account for disparities in N‐fixing tree abundance between the Asian and American tropics. Synthesis . Inputs of nitrogen to forests depend on symbiotic nitrogen fixation, which is constrained by the abundance of N‐fixing trees. By analysing a large dataset of ~4 million trees, we found that N‐fixing trees were consistently rare in the Asian tropics as well as across higher latitudes in Asia, America and Europe. The rarity of N‐fixing trees in the Asian tropics compared with the American tropics might stem from lower intrinsic N limitation in Asian tropical forests, although direct support for any mechanism is lacking. The paucity of N‐fixing trees throughout Asian forests suggests that N inputs to the Asian tropics might be lower than previously thought.
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