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Importance of topography for tree species habitat distributions in a terra firme forest in the Colombian Amazon.
Importance of topography for tree species habitat distributions in a terra firme forest in the Colombian Amazon.
- Source :
-
Plant & Soil . May2020, Vol. 450 Issue 1/2, p133-149. 17p. 3 Color Photographs, 2 Charts, 1 Graph. - Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- Aims: To test the relative importance of topography versus soil chemistry in defining tree species-habitat associations in a terra firme Amazonian forest. Method: We evaluated habitat associations for 612 woody species using alternative habitat maps generated from topography and soil chemistry in the 25-ha Amacayacu Forest Dynamics Plot, Colombian Amazon. We assessed the ability of each habitat map to explain the community-level patterns of species-habitat associations using two methods of habitat randomization and different sample size thresholds (i.e., species' abundance). Results: The greatest proportion of species-habitat associations arose from topographically-defined habitats (55% to 63%) compared to soil chemistry-defined (19% to 40%) or topography plus soil chemistry-defined habitats (18% to 42%). Results were robust to the method of habitat randomization and to sample size threshold. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that certain environmental factors may be more influential than others in defining forest-level patterns of community assembly and that comparison of the ability of different environmental variables to explain habitat associations is a crucial step in testing hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying assembly. Our results point to topography-driven hydrological variation as a key factor structuring tree species distributions in what are commonly considered homogeneous Amazonian terra firme forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *SPECIES distribution
*FOREST dynamics
*TOPOGRAPHY
*SOIL topography
*SOIL chemistry
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0032079X
- Volume :
- 450
- Issue :
- 1/2
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Plant & Soil
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 143855299
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3878-0