1. An estimate of the number of tropical tree species.
- Author
-
Ferry Slik, J. W., Arroyo-Rodríguez, Víctor, Shin-Ichiro Aiba, Alvarez-Loayza, Patricia, Alves, Luciana F., Ashton, Peter, Balvanera, Patricia, Bastian, Meredith L., Bellingham, Peter J., van den Berg, Eduardo, Bernacci, Luis, da Conceição Bispo, Polyanna, Blanc, Lilian, Böhning-Gaese, Katrin, Boeckx, Pascal, Bongers, Frans, Boyle, Brad, Bradford, Matt, Brearley, Francis Q., and Hockemba, Mireille Breuer-Ndoundou
- Subjects
PLANT species diversity ,TROPICAL forests ,VEGETATION surveys - Abstract
The high species richness of tropical forests has long been recognized, yet there remains substantial uncertainty regarding the actual number of tropical tree species. Using a pantropical tree inventory database from closed canopy forests, consisting of 657,630 trees belonging to 11,371 species, we use a fitted value of Fisher's alpha and an approximate pantropical stem total to estimate the minimum number of tropical forest tree species to fall between ∼40,000 and ∼53,000, i.e., at the high end of previous estimates. Contrary to common assumption, the Indo-Pacific region was found to be as species-rich as the Neotropics, with both regions having a minimum of ∼19,000-25,000 tree species. Continental Africa is relatively depauperate with a minimumof ∼4,500-6,000 tree species. Very few species are shared among the African, American, and the Indo-Pacific regions. We provide a methodological framework for estimating species richness in trees that may help refine species richness estimates of tree-dependent taxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF