Latitudinal scaling of aggregation with abundance and coexistence in forests

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wiegand, Thorsten; Wang, Xugao; Fischer, Samuel M.; Kraft, Nathan J. B.; Bourg, Norman A.; Brockelman, Warren Y.; Cao, Guanghong; Cao, Min; Chanthorn, Wirong; Chu, Chengjin; Davies, Stuart; Ediriweera, Sisira; Gunatilleke, C. V. Savitri; Gunatilleke, I. A. U. Nimal; Hao, Zhanqing; Howe, Robert; Jiang, Mingxi; Jin, Guangze; Kress, W. John; Li, Buhang; Lian, Juyu; Lin, Luxiang; Liu, Feng; Ma, Keping; Mcshea, William; Mi, Xiangcheng; Myers, Jonathan A.; Nathalang, Anuttara; Orwig, David A.; Shen, Guochun; Su, Sheng-Hsin; Sun, I-Fang; Wang, Xihua; Wolf, Amy; Yan, Enrong; Ye, Wanhui; Zhu, Yan; Huth, Andreas
• 署名单位: Helmholtz Association; Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ); German Research Foundation (DFG); German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); Chinese Academy of Sciences; Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecology, CAS; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian National Zoological Park & Conservation Biology Institute; National Science & Technology Development Agency - Thailand; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS; Kasetsart University; Sun Yat Sen University; Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; Uva Wellassa University; University of Peradeniya; Northwestern Polytechnical University; University of Wisconsin System; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wuhan Botanical Garden, CAS; Northeast Forestry University - China; Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; Chinese Academy of Sciences; South China Botanical Garden, CAS; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany, CAS; Washington University (WUSTL); Harvard University; East China Normal University; National Dong Hwa University; University Osnabruck
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-2182
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08604-z
• 发表日期: 2025-04-24
• 关键词: spatial-patterns; tropical forest; neighborhood interactions; interspecific variation; functional diversity; relative abundance; density-dependence; plant-communities; seed dispersal; COMPETITION

摘要

The search for simple principles that underlie the spatial structure and dynamics of plant communities is a long-standing challenge in ecology1, 2, 3, 4, 5-6. In particular, the relationship between species coexistence and the spatial distribution of plants is challenging to resolve in species-rich communities7, 8-9. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of the spatial patterns of 720 tree species in 21 large forest plots and their consequences for species coexistence. We show that species with low abundance tend to be more spatially aggregated than more abundant species. Moreover, there is a latitudinal gradient in the strength of this negative aggregation-abundance relationship that increases from tropical to temperate forests. We suggest, in line with recent work10, that latitudinal gradients in animal seed dispersal11 and mycorrhizal associations12, 13-14 may jointly generate this pattern. By integrating the observed spatial patterns into population models8, we derive the conditions under which species can invade from low abundance in terms of spatial patterns, demography, niche overlap and immigration. Evaluation of the spatial-invasion condition for the 720 tree species analysed suggests that temperate and tropical forests both meet the invasion criterion to a similar extent but through contrasting strategies conditioned by their spatial patterns. Our approach opens up new avenues for the integration of observed spatial patterns into ecological theory and underscores the need to understand the interaction among spatial patterns at the neighbourhood scale and multiple ecological processes in greater detail.