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Growth and reproduction respond differently to climate in three Neotropical tree species

  • Ecosystem ecology – original research
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Abstract

The response of tropical forests to anthropogenic climate change is critically important to future global carbon budgets, yet remains highly uncertain. Here, we investigate how precipitation, temperature, solar radiation and dry- and wet-season lengths are related to annual tree growth, flower production, and fruit production in three moist tropical forest tree species using long-term datasets from tree rings and litter traps in central Panama. We also evaluated how growth, flower, and fruit production were interrelated. We found that growth was positively correlated with wet-season precipitation in all three species: Jacaranda copaia (r = 0.63), Tetragastris panamensis (r = 0.39) and Trichilia tuberculata (r = 0.39). Flowering and fruiting in Jacaranda were negatively related to current-year dry-season rainfall and positively related to prior-year dry-season rainfall. Flowering in Tetragastris was negatively related to current-year annual mean temperature while Trichilia showed no significant relationships of reproduction with climate. Growth was significantly related to reproduction only in Tetragastris, where it was positively related to previous year fruiting. Our results suggest that tree growth in moist tropical forest tree species is generally reduced by drought events such as those associated with strong El Niño events. In contrast, interannual variation in reproduction is not generally associated with growth and has distinct and species-specific climate responses, with positive effects of El Niño events in some species. Understanding these contrasting climate effects on tree growth and reproduction is critical to predicting changes in tropical forest dynamics and species composition under climate change.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sebastian Bernal for assistance in the extraction and preparation of wood samples, Steve Paton for assistance with analyses of the meteorological data and Carrie Tribble and Matteo Detto for providing the dendrometer and soil moisture data in Fig. S4, respectively. Field work for this study was supported by a short-term fellowship from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (to RAS). This manuscript was developed with the support of the Ecometas excellence network (CGL2014-53840-REDT, Spanish Ministry of Economy).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, 1215 E Lowell St, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Raquel Alfaro-Sánchez

  2. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Panama

    Helene C. Muller-Landau & S. Joseph Wright

  3. Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (IPE-CSIC), Avda. Montañana, 1005, 50192, Saragossa, Spain

    J. Julio Camarero

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  1. Raquel Alfaro-Sánchez
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  2. Helene C. Muller-Landau
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  3. S. Joseph Wright
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  4. J. Julio Camarero
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RAS conceived and led the study. All authors contributed research ideas, participated in manuscript writing, and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Raquel Alfaro-Sánchez.

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Communicated by Allan T. G. Green.

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Alfaro-Sánchez, R., Muller-Landau, H.C., Wright, S.J. et al. Growth and reproduction respond differently to climate in three Neotropical tree species. Oecologia 184, 531–541 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-017-3879-3

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