Divergent drivers of tree community composition in lowland and highland forests of the northern tropical Andes, Colombia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.acbi.v38n105a02Keywords:
elevational gradient, environmental filtering, montane forests, spatial analysis, ColombiaAbstract
Identifying the determinants of tree species composition among contrasting altitudinal tropical forest types will improve our understanding of the main factors and processes controlling tree species’ distributions and patterns of diversity. The study area is located in the northwest region of Colombia. We used Redundancy Analysis (RDA) and a semi-log distance-decay model to analyze the influence of climate, soil fertility, and spatial processes, such as dispersal limitation, on community composition. There were 3 distinct forest types: one in the highlands and two in the lowlands. In the lowlands, both the RDA and the semi-log linear models identified calcium concentrations as the most important explanatory variable for species composition (R2 adj = 0.24; p = 0.001 and RMantel = 0.68; p = 0.006, respectively). In the highlands, the RDA only identified longitude as being a significant explanatory variable (R2 adj = 0.24; p = 0.001), primarily determined by the biogeographical location of forests on either the West or the Central Cordillera of the Andes. In these neotropical forests, the factors determining tree species composition between lowlands and highlands varied in both extent and nature. Overall, our findings do not support the idea of a higher habitat-plant specialization in highlands than in lowlands due to greater geomorphologic and edaphic variation. Since tropical Andean ecosystems, and in particular highland forests, have received less attention than their lowland counterparts, our findings help to expand the current knowledge of factors and processes determining community composition of tropical montane forests.
Downloads
References
Aiba S, Kitayama K. 1999. Structure, composition and species diversityin an altitude-substrate matrix of rain forest tree communities on mount Kinabalu, Borneo. Plant Ecology, 140 (2): 139-157.
Borcard D, Gillet F, Legendre P. 2011. Numerical ecology with R. New York: Springer. p. 306.
Cabrera E, Galindo G, Vargas DM. 2011. Protocolo de procesamiento digital de imágenes para la cuantificación de la deforestación en Colombia, nivel nacional escala gruesa y fina. Bogotá D. C. (Colombia): Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología, y Estudios Ambientales-IDEAM. p. 44.
Chain-Guadarrama A, Finegan B, Vilchez S, Casanoves F. 2012. Determinants of rain-forest floristic variation on an altitudinal gradient in southern Costa Rica. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 28 (5): 463-481.
Clark DB, Palmer MW, Clark DA. 1999. Edaphic factors and the landscape-scale distributions of tropical rain forest trees. Ecology, 80 (8): 2662-2675.
Clinebell II, RR, Phillips OL, Gentry AH, Stark N, Zuuring H. 1995. Prediction of neotropical tree and liana species richness from soil and climatic data. Biodiversity and Conservation, 4 (1): 56-90.
Condit R, Pitman N, Leigh EG, Chave J, Terborgh J, Foster RB, Nuñez P, Aguilar S, Valencia R, Villa G, Muller-Landau HC, Losos E, Hubbell SP. 2002. Beta-diversity in tropical forest trees. Science, 295 (5555): 666-669.
Condit R, Engelbrecht B, Pino D, Pérez R, Turner L. 2013. Species distributions in response to individual soil nutrients and seasonal drought across a community of tropical trees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 110: 5064-5068.
Davidar P. Rajagopal B, Mohandass D, Puyravaud JP, Condit R, Wright SJ, Leigh EG. 2007. The effect of climatic gradients, topographic variation and species traits on the beta diversity of rain forest trees. Global Ecolology and Biogeography, 16 (4): 510-518.
Duivenvoorden, JF, Svenning J-Ch, Wright SJ. 2002. Beta diversity in tropical forests. Science, 295(5555): 636-637.
Duque Á, Sánchez M, Cavelier J, Duivenvoorden JF. 2002. Different floristic patterns of woody understorey and canopy plants in Colombian Amazonia. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 18 (4): 499-525.
Duque Á, Phillips JF, Hildebrand P, Posada CA, Prieto A, Rudas A, Suescún M, Stevenson P. 2009. Distance decay of tree species similarity in protected areas on terra firme forests in Colombian Amazonia. Biotropica, 41 (5): 599-607.
Duque Á, Feeley K, Cabrera E, Callejas R, Idárraga Á. 2014. The dangers of carbon-centric conservation for biodiversity: a case study in the Andes. Tropical Conservation Science, 7 (2): 178-193.
Duque Á, Stevenson P, Feeley K. 2015. Thermophilization of adult and juvenile tree communities in the northern tropical Andes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 7: 10744-10749.
Engelbrecht BM, Comita LS, Condit R, Kursar AT, Tyree MT, Turner BL, Hubbell SP. 2007. Drought sensitivity shapes species distribution patterns in tropical forests. Nature, 447 (7140): 80-82.
Feeley K, Hurtado J, Saatchi S, Silman M, Clark D. 2013. Compositional shifts due to climate-driven species migration. Global Change Biology, 19 (11): 3472-3480.
Garibaldi C, Nieto-Ariza B, Macía MJ, Cayuela L. 2014. Soil and geographic distance as determinants of floristic composition in the Azuero Peninsula (Panama). Biotropica, 46 (6): 687-895.
Gentry AH. 1982. Patterns of neotropical plant species diversity. In: Hecht MK, Wallace B, Prance ET, editors. Evolutionary biology. New York (USA): Plenum Press. Vol. 15: 1-84.
Gentry AH. 1988. Changes in plant community diversity and floristic composition on geographical and environmental gradients. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 75 (1): 1-34.
Gentry AH. 1995. Patterns of diversity and floristic composition in neotropical montane forests. In: Churchill SP, Balslev H, Forero E, Luteyn J, editors. Biodiversity and conservation of neotropical montane forests. New York: New York Botanical Garden. p. 103-126.
Hemp A. 2005. Continuum or zonation? Altitudinal gradients in the forest vegetation of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Plant Ecology, 184 (1): 27-42.
Hubbell SP. 2001. The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 392.
IGAC. 2007. Antioquia. Características geográficas. Bogotá (Colombia): Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi. p. 320.
John RC, Dalling JW, Harms KE, Yavitt JB, Stallard RF, Mirabello M, Hubbell SP, Valencia R, Navarrete H, Vallejo M, Foster RB. 2007. Soil nutrients influence spatial distributions of tropical tree species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (3): 864-869.
Jones MM, Tuomisto H, Borcard D, Legendre P, Clark DB, Olivas PC. 2008. Explaining variation in tropical plant community composition: influence of environmental and spatial data quality. Oecologia, 155 (3): 593-604.
Jones MM, Szyska B, Kessler M. 2011. Microhabitat partitioning promotes plant diversity in a tropical montane. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20: 558-569
Legendre P, Gallagher ED. 2001. Ecologically meaningful transformations for ordination of species data. Oecologia, 129 (2): 271-280.
Legendre P, Legendre L. 2012. Numerical ecology. 3th edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier. p. 1006.
Legendre P, De Cáceres M. 2013. Beta diversity as the variance of community data: dissimilarity coefficients and partitioning. Ecology Letters, 16 (8): 951-963.
Myers N, Mittermier RA, Mittermier CG, da Fonseca GAB, Kent J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature, 403 (6772): 853-858.
Nekola JC, White PS. 1999. The distance decay of similarity in biogeography and ecology. Journal of Biogeography, 26 (4): 867 878.
Oksanen J, Blanchet FG, Kindt R, Legendre P, Minchin PR, O’Hara RB, Simpson GL, Solymos P, Stevens MHH, Wagner H. 2016. Vegan: Community Ecology Package. R package ver. 2.3-5 [Internet]. Accessed: 03 May 2016. Available from: <https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/vegan/index.html>.
Phillips OL, Núñez-Vargas P, Monteagudo AL, Peña-Cruz A, Chuspe- Zans ME, Galiano-Sánchez W, Yli-Halla M, Rose S. 2003. Habitat association among Amazonian tree species: a landscape-scale approach. Journal of Ecology, 91 (5): 757-775.
Stevens GC. 1992. The elevational gradient in altitudinal range: an extension of Rapoport’s latitudinal rule to altitude. American Naturalist, 140 (6): 893-911.
Tuomisto H, Ruokolainen K. 2006. Analyzing or explaining beta diversity? Understanding the targets of different methods of analysis. Ecology, 87 (11): 2697-2708.
Tuomisto H, Ruokolainen K, Yli-Halla M. 2003. Dispersal, environment, and floristic variation of western Amazonian forests. Science, 299 (5604): 241-244.
Vásquez JA, Givnish TJ. 1998. Altitudinal gradients in tropical forest composition, structure, and diversity in the sierra de Manantlan. Journal of Ecology, 86 (6): 999-1020.
Vormisto J, Svenning J-Ch, Hall P, Balslev H. 2004. Diversity and dominance in palm (Arecaceae) communities in terra firme forests in the western Amazon basin. Journal of Ecology, 92 (4): 577-588.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2017 Actualidades Biológicas
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The authors exclusively authorize the Actualidades Biológicas journal to edit and publish the submitted manuscript if its publication is recommended and accepted, without this representing any cost to the Journal or the University of Antioquia.
All the ideas and opinions contained in the articles are sole responsibility of the authors. The total content of the issues or supplements of the journal is protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, so they cannot be used for commercial purposes, but for educational purposes. However, please mention the Actualidades Biológicas journal as a source and send a copy of the publication in which the content was reproduced.
