Journal article
Contrasting effects of defaunation on aboveground carbon storage across the global tropics
Nature Communications, Vol.7(11351)
2016
Abstract
Defaunation is causing declines of large-seeded animal-dispersed trees in tropical forests worldwide, but whether and how these declines will affect carbon storage across this biome is unclear. Here we show, using a pan-tropical data set, that simulated declines of large-seeded animal-dispersed trees have contrasting effects on aboveground carbon stocks across Earth's tropical forests. In our simulations, African, American and South Asian forests, which have high proportions of animal-dispersed species, consistently show carbon losses (2-12%), but Southeast Asian and Australian forests, where there are more abiotically dispersed species, show little to no carbon losses or marginal gains (±1%). These patterns result primarily from changes in wood volume, and are underlain by consistent relationships in our empirical data (B2,100 species), wherein, large-seeded animal-dispersed species are larger as adults than small-seeded animal-dispersed species, but are smaller than abiotically dispersed species. Thus, floristic differences and distinct dispersal mode-seed size-adult size combinations can drive contrasting regional responses to defaunation.
Details
- Title
- Contrasting effects of defaunation on aboveground carbon storage across the global tropics
- Authors
- A M Osuri (Author) - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, IndiaJ Ratnam (Author) - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, IndiaV Varma (Author) - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, IndiaP Alvarez-Loayza (Author) - Duke University, United StatesJ H Astaiza (Author) - Organization for Tropical Studies, Costa RicaM Bradford (Author) - CSIRO Land and WaterC Fletcher (Author) - Forest Research Institute Malaysia, MalaysiaM Ndoundou-Hockemba (Author) - Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Congo-Program, Republic of CongoP A Jansen (Author) - Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, United StatesD Kenfack (Author) - Smithsonian Institution, United StatesAndrew R Marshall (Author) - University of York, United KingdomB R Ramesh (Author) - Institut Francais de Pondichery, IndiaF Rovero (Author) - MUSE, ItalyM Sankaran (Author) - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India
- Publication details
- Nature Communications, Vol.7(11351); 7
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2016
- DOI
- 10.1038/ncomms11351
- ISSN
- 2041-1723
- Copyright note
- Copyright © 2016 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Organisation Unit
- Tropical Forests and People Research Centre; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering; Forest Research Institute
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99450465402621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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