Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32361752›Full record

ArticleAnnals of botany2021

On the modelling of tropical tree growth: the importance of intra-specific trait variation, non-linear functions and phenotypic integration.

Jie Yang, Xiaoyang Song, Min Cao, Xiaobao Deng, Wenfu Zhang, Xiaofei Yang, Nathan G Swenson

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Article in Annals of botany, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

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4citing papers in PubMed
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4 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Jie YangCAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Xiaoyang SongCAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Min CaoCAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Xiaobao DengCAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Wenfu ZhangCAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Xiaofei YangCAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan, China.
Nathan G SwensonDepartment of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND

aimsThe composition and dynamics of plant communities arise from individual-level demographic outcomes, which are driven by interactions between phenotypes and the environment. Functional traits that can be measured across plants are frequently used to model plant growth and survival. Perhaps surprisingly, species average trait values are often used in these studies and, in some cases, these trait values come from other regions or averages calculated from global databases. This data aggregation potentially results in a large loss of valuable information that probably results in models of plant performance that are weak or even misleading.

methodsWe present individual-level trait and fine-scale growth data from >500 co-occurring individual trees from 20 species in a Chinese tropical rain forest. We construct Bayesian models of growth informed by theory and construct hierarchical Bayesian models that utilize both individual- and species-level trait data, and compare these models with models only using individual-level data. KEY

resultsWe show that trait-growth relationships measured at the individual level vary across species, are often weak using commonly measured traits and do not align with the results of analyses conducted at the species level. However, when we construct individual-level models of growth using leaf area ratio approximations and integrated phenotypes, we generated strong predictive models of tree growth.

conclusionsHere, we have shown that individual-level models of tree growth that are built using integrative traits always outperform individual-level models of tree growth that use commonly measured traits. Furthermore, individual-level models, generally, do not support the findings of trait-growth relationships quantified at the species level. This indicates that aggregating trait and growth data to the species level results in poorer and probably misleading models of how traits are related to tree performance.

Indexed as

Plant LeavesRainforestBayes TheoremPhenotypePlant DevelopmentTropical Climateintra-specific trait variationrain forestTree growthtropical forest

Identifiers

PMID32361752
PMCPMC7988515

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