Effect of climate on traits of dominant and rare tree species in the world’s forests

Iris Hordijk; Lourens Poorter; Jingjing Liang; Peter B Reich; Sergio de-Miguel; Gert-Jan Nabuurs; Javier G. P. Gamarra; Han Y. H. Chen; Mo Zhou; Susan K. Wiser; See article for complete list of authors; Robin Chazdon; John Herbohn; Andrew Marshall; Sharif A Mukul

doi:10.1038/s41467-025-59754-7

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Effect of climate on traits of dominant and rare tree species in the world’s forests

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Effect of climate on traits of dominant and rare tree species in the world’s forests

Iris Hordijk, Lourens Poorter, Jingjing Liang, Peter B Reich, Sergio de-Miguel, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Javier G. P. Gamarra, Han Y. H. Chen, Mo Zhou, Susan K. Wiser, …

Nature Communications, Vol.16, pp.1-15

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59754-7

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Abstract

biodiversity

community ecology

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. The extent to which traits of dominant and rare tree species differ remains untested across a broad environmental range, limiting our understanding of how species traits and the environment shape forest functional composition. We use a global dataset of tree composition of >22,000 forest plots and 11 traits of 1663 tree species to ask how locally dominant and rare species differ in their trait values, and how these differences are driven by climatic gradients in temperature and water availability in forest biomes across the globe. We find three consistent trait differences between locally dominant and rare species across all biomes; dominant species are taller, have softer wood and higher loading on the multivariate stem strategy axis (related to narrow tracheids and thick bark). The difference between traits of dominant and rare species is more strongly driven by temperature compared to water availability, as temperature might affect a larger number of traits. Therefore, climate change driven global temperature rise may have a strong effect on trait differences between dominant and rare tree species and may lead to changes in species abundances and therefore strong community reassembly.

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Title: Effect of climate on traits of dominant and rare tree species in the world’s forests
Authors: Iris Hordijk (Corresponding Author) - ETH Zurich
Lourens Poorter - Wageningen University & Research
Jingjing Liang - Purdue University West Lafayette
Peter B Reich - Western Sydney University
Sergio de-Miguel - Universitat de Lleida
Gert-Jan Nabuurs - Wageningen University & Research
Javier G. P. Gamarra - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Han Y. H. Chen - Lakehead University
Mo Zhou - Purdue University West Lafayette
Susan K. Wiser - Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research
See article for complete list of authors (Author)
Robin Chazdon - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Tropical Forests and People Research Centre
John Herbohn - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research
Andrew Marshall - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Tropical Forests and People Research Centre
Sharif A Mukul - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Tropical Forests and People Research Centre
Publication details: Nature Communications, Vol.16, pp.1-15
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59754-7
ISSN: 2041-1723
Copyright note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Data Availability: The plot-level data of the difference between trait values of dominant and rare tree species are stored in Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15393651. The GFBI database is available upon written request at https://gfbinitiative.net/data/. Source data are provided with this paper.
Organisation Unit: Tropical Forests and People Research Centre; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991128901402621
Output Type: Journal article

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