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Background: Forests have a huge potential to mitigate global warming through CO2 accumulation in their living biomass. Thus, understanding the functioning of these ecosystems is crucial for revealing factors that drive biomass accumulation. Functional diversity helps us understand ecosystem services, including biomass accumulation. Within this context, this work aimed to investigate the role of functional diversity in biomass accumulation for woody vegetation of the Cerradão. Methods: We estimated above-ground biomass (AGB) of 50 Cerradão stands in Brazil and measured five different functional traits associated with tree species' survival and growth. For each stand, we calculated five community-weighted means (CWMs), based on each functional trait, and three functional diversity metrics. We specifically explored the relationship between CWMs describing functional diversity metrics and AGB. After that, exponential regressions were adjusted, using the variables that presented significant correlation as independent variables and AGB as a dependent variable. Regressions with more than one independent variable were fitted in a way that avoided collinearity. Based on the strongest correlation coefficient (r) and the lowest Akaike value (AIC), we chose the best regression to explain the majority of the variance in AGB. Results: Our results showed the role of function in determining AGB. In particular, bivariate correlations show that four CWM functional traits and two functional diversity metrics are significantly associated with AGB production, with CWM showing AGB estimation variables. However, multiple regression analyses show that maximum height is the only trait significantly associated with AGB and it alone provides the best model fit. Conclusions: The accumulation of AGB in Cerradão is explained by the mass ratio theory, and this ecosystem services is directly related to the presence and abundance of species with greater potential tree height (Htmax). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological influence of functional traits on species persistence as well as on their role over the organization of forest communities in the Brazilian Cerrado biome have not been fully understood yet. In this study, we assessed the effects of six functional groups, characterized by three seed dispersal syndromes (i.e., anemochory, autochory, and zoochory) and three wood density classes (i.e., hardwood, lightwood, and softwood), on tree spatial distribution patterns, habitat occupancy, and ecosystem services (biomass hyper dominance and abundance) provided by a forest community located in the "Parque do Lajeado", state of Tocantins, Brazil. The similarity among study sites was characterized by applying the tree dominant height approach and the environmental and soil variables as input. The floristic similarity was assessed by applying the Bray-Curtis index. The zoochoric species showed more aggregated spatial pattern at local scale, which indicates that it is more sensitive to environmental gradients than other dispersal syndromes. Meanwhile, hardwood density species were more established in the community, being more persistent to environmental filters. We observed that a small number of species contributed with about 50% of the abundance and biomass of the community, whose functional traits (wood density and dispersal syndrome) indirectly affect the relationship among the community species richness and their ecosystem functions. We observed that the functional traits related to seed dispersal and wood density functional groups resulted in different spatial distribution patterns of those tree species. Therefore, functional traits and environmental factors combined have substantially affected the structure and composition of forest communities at local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]