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Linking Patterns and Processes of Tree Community Assembly Across Spatial Scales in Tropical Montane Forests

2020; Ecological Society of America; Volume: 101; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/bes2.1732

2327-6096

Guillermo Bañares‐de‐Dios, Manuel J. Macía, Íñigo Granzow‐de la Cerda, Itziar Arnelas, Gabriel Martins de Carvalho, Carlos I. Espinosa, Norma Salinas, Nathan G. Swenson, Luis Cayuela,

Wildlife-Road Interactions and Conservation

Environmental filtering and competitive exclusion are acknowledged deterministic community assembly mechanisms, yet a lack of consensus exists about at which spatial scales they operate. By studying woody plant functional traits along altitudinal gradients of Andean tropical montane forest in Ecuador and Peru, our results show a functional clustering pattern at large spatial scale (along altitude), which is consistent with an environmental filtering process. Additionally, by exploring differences in the climatic preferences of the most abundant species found at lower and higher altitudes and examining whether their abundances shift along altitude, we confirmed the environmental filtering beyond the observed functional pattern. These photographs illustrate the article “Linking patterns and processes of tree community assembly across spatial scales in tropical montane forests” by Guillermo Bañares-de-Dios, Manuel J. Macía, Íñigo Granzow-de la Cerda, Itziar Arnelas, Gabriel Martins de Carvalho, Carlos I. Espinosa, Norma Salinas, Nathan G. Swenson and Luis Cayuela published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3058