Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change
Publication date
2025-03-07
Authors
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Jesús
Díaz, Sandra
Rifai, Sami W.
Corral-Rivas, Jose Javier
Nava-Miranda, Maria Guadalupe
González-M, Roy
Hurtado-M, Ana Belén
Revilla, Norma Salinas
Vilanova, Emilio
Almeida, Everton
Editors
Advisors
Supervisors
Document Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
License
taverne
Abstract
Understanding the capacity of forests to adapt to climate change is of pivotal importance for conservation science, yet this is still widely unknown. This knowledge gap is particularly acute in high-biodiversity tropical forests. Here, we examined how tropical forests of the Americas have shifted community trait composition in recent decades as a response to changes in climate. Based on historical trait-climate relationships, we found that, overall, the studied functional traits show shifts of less than 8% of what would be expected given the observed changes in climate. However, the recruit assemblage shows shifts of 21% relative to climate change expectation. The most diverse forests on Earth are changing in functional trait composition but at a rate that is fundamentally insufficient to track climate change.
Keywords
Taverne, General, SDG 13 - Climate Action
Citation
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J, Díaz, S, Rifai, S W, Corral-Rivas, J J, Nava-Miranda, M G, González-M, R, Hurtado-M, A B, Revilla, N S, Vilanova, E, Almeida, E, de Oliveira, E A, Alvarez-Davila, E, Alves, L F, de Andrade, A C S, Lola da Costa, A C, Vieira, S A, Aragão, L, Arets, E, Aymard C, G A, Baccaro, F, Bakker, Y V, Baker, T R, Bánki, O, Baraloto, C, de Camargo, P B, Berenguer, E, Blanc, L, Bonal, D, Bongers, F, Bordin, K M, Brienen, R, Brown, F, Prestes, N C C S, Castilho, C V, Ribeiro, S C, de Souza, F C, Comiskey, J A, Valverde, F C, Müller, S C, da Costa Silva, R, do Vale, J D, de Andrade Kamimura, V, de Oliveira Perdiz, R, Del Aguila Pasquel, J, Derroire, G, Di Fiore, A, Disney, M, Farfan-Rios, W, Fauset, S, Feldpausch, T R, Ramos, R F, Llampazo, G F, Martins, V F, Fortunel, C, Cabrera, K G, Barroso, J G, Hérault, B, Herrera, R, Honorio Coronado, E N, Huamantupa-Chuquimaco, I, Pipoly, J J, Zanini, K J, Jiménez, E, Joly, C A, Kalamandeen, M, Klipel, J, Levesley, A, Oviedo, W L, Magnusson, W E, Dos Santos, R M, Marimon, B S, Marimon-Junior, B H, de Almeida Reis, S M, Melo Cruz, O A, Mendoza, A M, Morandi, P, Muscarella, R, Nascimento, H, Neill, D A, Menor, I O, Palacios, W A, Palacios-Ramos, S, Pallqui Camacho, N C, Pardo, G, Pennington, R T, de Oliveira Pereira, L, Pickavance, G, Picolotto, R C, Pitman, N C A, Prieto, A, Quesada, C, Ramírez-Angulo, H, Réjou-Méchain, M, Correa, Z R, Reyna Huaymacari, J M, Rodriguez, C R, Rivas-Torres, G, Roopsind, A, Rudas, A, Salgado Negret, B, van der Sande, M T, Santana, F D, Maës Santos, F A, Bergamin, R S, Silman, M R, Silva, C, Espejo, J S, Silveira, M, Souza, F C, Sullivan, M J P, Swamy, V, Talbot, J, Terborgh, J J, van der Meer, P J, van der Heijden, G, van Ulft, B, Martinez, R V, Vedovato, L, Vleminckx, J, Vos, V A, Wortel, V, Zuidema, P A, Zwerts, J A, Laurance, S G W, Laurance, W F, Chave, J, Dalling, J W, Barlow, J, Poorter, L, Enquist, B J, Ter Steege, H, Phillips, O L, Galbraith, D & Malhi, Y 2025, 'Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change', Science (New York, N.Y.), vol. 387, no. 6738, eadl5414. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl5414