ORCID
- Sophie Fauset: 0000-0003-4246-1828
Abstract
Understanding the capacity of forests to adapt to climate change is of pivotal importance for conservation science, yet this is still widely unknown. This knowledge gap is particularly acute in high-biodiversity tropical forests. Here, we examined how tropical forests of the Americas have shifted community trait composition in recent decades as a response to changes in climate. Based on historical trait-climate relationships, we found that, overall, the studied functional traits show shifts of less than 8% of what would be expected given the observed changes in climate. However, the recruit assemblage shows shifts of 21% relative to climate change expectation. The most diverse forests on Earth are changing in functional trait composition but at a rate that is fundamentally insufficient to track climate change.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2025-03-07
Publication Title
Science (New York, N.Y.)
Volume
387
Issue
6738
ISSN
0036-8075
Acceptance Date
2025-01-08
Deposit Date
2025-04-01
Funding
We thank the following networks for access for long-term plot data and plant trait data: RAINFOR (Amazon Forest Inventory Network, https://rainfor.org/en/), GEM (Global Ecosystems Monitoring network), and MONAFOR (forestales.ujed.mx/monafor) networks, as well as the ForestPlots.net metanetwork (https:// forestplots.net/, data request 109 and 184). We also thank the Herbarium of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación para el Desarrollo Integral Regional campus Durango (CIIDIR), the botanical experts in the CIIDIR and the local support of Ejidos and Comunidades in Mexico. We also thank the following individuals for contributing data and for playing key roles at different stages from data collection and curation to delivery: A. Vicentini, A. Araujo-Murakami, A. Parada Gutierrez, A. S. Lima, A. Torres-Lezama, A. Dourdain, B. Burban, C. Mendoza, D. Catchpole, D. Galiano Cabrera, D. H. Neill Asanza, D. Morton, E. Hase, E. Chavez, F. Ramirez Arevalo, G. Damasco, G. Lopez-Gonzalez, G. Bañares de Dios, H. Buttgenbach Verde, I. Mendoza Polo, J. Richardson, J. Singh, J. Lleigue, J. L. Camargo, J. Stropp, J. Engel, J. Serrano, K. Melgaço, L. Ferreira, L. G. Canesi Ferreira, L. F. Duque, L. Arroyo, M. Peña-Claros, M. Steininger, M. Salgado Vital, M. Carmozina Araújo, M. Toledo, M. Corrales Medina, M. Tobler, M. Baisie, N. Silva, P. Petronelli, P. Alvarez Loayza, P. Núñez Vargas, P. van der Hout, P. Naisso, R. Oliveira de Araújo, R. Thomas, R. Boot, R. Guillén Villaroel, R. Zagt, S. Murakami, T. Killeen, V. Chama Moscoso, V. Bezard, W. Betian, W. Castro, Y. Soto Shareva, Y. T. Huilca Aedo. This manuscript is an output of ForestPlots.net Research Projects #109 and #184 “Plant functional trait changes across space and time in South American forests”, as part of the NERC-FAPESP funded project ARBOLES (NE/S011811/1). ForestPlots.net is a meta-network and cyber-initiative developed at the University of Leeds to unite permanent plot records and support tropical forest scientists. The ForestPlots.net Collaboration and Data Request Committee for the Americas (T.R.B., E.N.H.C, A.L, O.L.P., B.S.M.) facilitated this project and associated data management. The development of RAINFOR, ForestPlots.net and data curation have been funded by several grants including NE/B503384/1, NE/ N012542/1 - ‘BIO-RED’, NE/X018903/1 - ‘AMSINK’, ERC Advanced Grant 291585 - ‘T-FORCES’, NE/F005806/1 - ‘AMAZONICA’, NE/ N004655/1 - ‘TREMOR’’, NERC New Investigators Awards, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (‘RAINFOR’, ‘MonANPeru’), ERC Starter Grant 758873 -‘TreeMort’, and from EU Framework 5, 6, and 7. Finally, we thank these contributors who are deceased: N. Davila Cardozo, T. Erwin, A. Gentry, S. Patiño, Antonio Pena Cruz, E. Armas, and J.-P. Veillon. J.A.-G. was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council under an independent research fellowship (NERC grant NE/T011084/1), NERC Pushing the Frontiers (NE/Z504191/1), and the Oxford University John Fell Fund (grant 10667). Global traits collection and traits analyses under GEM were funded by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award (GEM-TRAIT grant 321131) to Y.M. under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (grant FP7/2007–2013) with additional support from NERC grant NE/D014174/1 and NE/J022616/1 for traits work in Peru and NERC grant ECOFOR (NE/K016385/1) for traits work in Santarem. Plot inventories in Peru were supported by funding from the US National Science Foundation Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology program (LTREB grant DEB 1754647) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Andes–Amazon Program. Plot inventories in Nova Xavantina (Brazil) were supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) PQ1 grants 311027/2019-9 and 303492/ 2022-8 to B.H.M. and B.S.M., the Long-Term Ecological Research Program (PELD), processes 441244/2016–5 and 441572/2020-0, and the Foundation of Research Support of Mato Grosso (FAPEMAT), Project ReFlor, processes 589267/2016 and PELD/ FAPEMAT 0346321/2021. S.D. acknowledges support from CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and Red Federal de Alto Impacto CONATURAR (grant 2023-102072649-APN-MCT) Argentina and the Oxford Martin School. C.A.J. acknowledges support from the Brazilian National Research Council/CNPq (PELD process 403710/2012–0), NERC, and the State of São Paulo Research Foundation/FAPESP as part of the projects Functional Gradient, PELD/BIOTA and ECOFOR (processes 2003/ 12595-7, 2012/51509-8 and 2012/51872-5, within the BIOTA/ FAPESP Program—The Biodiversity Virtual Institute; COTEC/IF 002.766/2013 and 010.631/2013 permits. B.S.M. was supported by the CNPq/PELD projects 441244/2016-5 and 441572/2020-0 and CAPES project 136277/2017-0. M.S. acknowledges funding for Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG) plot network from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB grant 1754647), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Andes to Amazon Initiative, and RAINFOR. E.B, J.B., and Y.M. acknowledge support from NERC under projects NE/K016431/1 and NE/S01084X/1. Y.M. is supported by the Frank Jackson Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust. The MONAFOR network in Mexico has been funded by several projects highlighting those by the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) and the Council of Science and Technology of the State of Durango (COCYTED); F.C.S. acknowledges the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – Brazil (CAPES) (Finance Code 001), and the Brazilian National Research Council/CNPq (PDJ Process No. 152806/2024-5). B.J.E. was supported by NSF awards (grant nos 2225078 and 2225076). We thank the following networks for access for long-term plot data and plant trait data: RAINFOR (Amazon Forest Inventory Network, https://rainfor.org/en/), GEM (Global Ecosystems Monitoring network), and MONAFOR (forestales.ujed.mx/monafor) networks, as well as the ForestPlots.net metanetwork (https:// forestplots.net/, data request 109 and 184). We also thank the Herbarium of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación para el Desarrollo Integral Regional campus Durango (CIIDIR), the botanical experts in the CIIDIR and the local support of Ejidos and Comunidades in Mexico. We also thank the following individuals for contributing data and for playing key roles at different stages from data collection and curation to delivery: A. Vicentini, A. Araujo-Murakami, A. Parada Gutierrez, A. S. Lima, A. Torres-Lezama, A. Dourdain, B. Burban, C. Mendoza, D. Catchpole, D. Galiano Cabrera, D. H. Neill Asanza, D. Morton, E. Hase, E. Chavez, F. Ramirez Arevalo, G. Damasco, G. Lopez-Gonzalez, G. Bañares de Dios, H. Buttgenbach Verde, I. Mendoza Polo, J. Richardson, J. Singh, J. Lleigue, J. L. Camargo, J. Stropp, J. Engel, J. Serrano, K. Melgaço, L. Ferreira, L. G. Canesi Ferreira, L. F. Duque, L. Arroyo, M. Peña-Claros, M. Steininger, M. Salgado Vital, M. Carmozina Araújo, M. Toledo, M. Corrales Medina, M. Tobler, M. Baisie, N. Silva, P. Petronelli, P. Alvarez Loayza, P. Núñez Vargas, P. van der Hout, P. Naisso, R. Oliveira de Araújo, R. Thomas, R. Boot, R. Guillén Villaroel, R. Zagt, S. Murakami, T. Killeen, V. Chama Moscoso, V. Bezard, W. Betian, W. Castro, Y. Soto Shareva, Y. T. Huilca Aedo. This manuscript is an output of ForestPlots.net Research Projects #109 and #184 “Plant functional trait changes across space and time in South American forests”, as part of the NERC-FAPESP funded project ARBOLES (NE/S011811/1). ForestPlots.net is a meta-network and cyber-initiative developed at the University of Leeds to unite permanent plot records and support tropical forest scientists. The ForestPlots.net Collaboration and Data Request Committee for the Americas (T.R.B., E.N.H.C, A.L, O.L.P., B.S.M.) facilitated this project and associated data management. The development of RAINFOR, ForestPlots.net and data curation have been funded by several grants including NE/B503384/1, NE/ N012542/1 - ‘BIO-RED’, NE/X018903/1 - ‘AMSINK’, ERC Advanced Grant 291585 - ‘T-FORCES’, NE/F005806/1 - ‘AMAZONICA’, NE/ N004655/1 - ‘TREMOR’’, NERC New Investigators Awards, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (‘RAINFOR’, ‘MonANPeru’), ERC Starter Grant 758873 -‘TreeMort’, and from EU Framework 5, 6, and 7. Finally, we thank these contributors who are deceased: N. Davila Cardozo, T. Erwin, A. Gentry, S. Patiño, Antonio Pena Cruz, E. Armas, and J.-P. Veillon. Funding: J.A.-G. was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council under an independent research fellowship (NERC grant NE/T011084/1), NERC Pushing the Frontiers (NE/Z504191/1), and the Oxford University John Fell Fund (grant 10667). Global traits collection and traits analyses under GEM were funded by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award (GEM-TRAIT grant 321131) to Y.M. under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (grant FP7/2007–2013) with additional support from NERC grant NE/D014174/1 and NE/J022616/1 for traits work in Peru and NERC grant ECOFOR (NE/K016385/1) for traits work in Santarem. Plot inventories in Peru were supported by funding from the US National Science Foundation Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology program (LTREB grant DEB 1754647) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Andes–Amazon Program. Plot inventories in Nova Xavantina (Brazil) were supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) PQ1 grants 311027/2019-9 and 303492/ 2022-8 to B.H.M. and B.S.M., the Long-Term Ecological Research Program (PELD), processes 441244/2016–5 and 441572/2020-0, and the Foundation of Research Support of Mato Grosso (FAPEMAT), Project ReFlor, processes 589267/2016 and PELD/ FAPEMAT 0346321/2021. S.D. acknowledges support from CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and Red Federal de Alto Impacto CONATURAR (grant 2023-102072649-APN-MCT) Argentina and the Oxford Martin School. C.A.J. acknowledges support from the Brazilian National Research Council/CNPq (PELD process 403710/2012–0), NERC, and the State of São Paulo Research Foundation/FAPESP as part of the projects Functional Gradient, PELD/BIOTA and ECOFOR (processes 2003/ 12595-7, 2012/51509-8 and 2012/51872-5, within the BIOTA/ FAPESP Program—The Biodiversity Virtual Institute; COTEC/IF 002.766/2013 and 010.631/2013 permits. B.S.M. was supported by the CNPq/PELD projects 441244/2016-5 and 441572/2020-0 and CAPES project 136277/2017-0. M.S. acknowledges funding for Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG) plot network from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB grant 1754647), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Andes to Amazon Initiative, and RAINFOR. E.B, J.B., and Y.M. acknowledge support from NERC under projects NE/K016431/1 and NE/S01084X/1. Y.M. is supported by the Frank Jackson Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust. The MONAFOR network in Mexico has been funded by several projects highlighting those by the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) and the Council of Science and Technology of the State of Durango (COCYTED); F.C.S. acknowledges the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – Brazil (CAPES) (Finance Code 001), and the Brazilian National Research Council/CNPq (PDJ Process No. 152806/2024-5). B.J.E. was supported by NSF awards (grant nos 2225078 and 2225076). Author contributions: Conceptualization: J.A.-G., S.D., S.R., Y.M.; Data gathering: all authors; Data management: J.A.-G., A.L., O.L.P., G.P.; Methodology: J.A.-G., S.D., Y.M., S.R.; Supervision (general): J.A.-G.; Supervision (forest and traits networks): J.C.C.-R., Y.M., O.P.; Writing – original draft: J.A.-G.; Writing – review & editing: all authors. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: The vegetation census and plant functional traits data that support the findings of this study are available from (28), www.ForestPlots.net (29), and their other original sources. Given data sovereignty from the original data owners, raw data on vegetation censuses across time are not publicly available but can be requested by contacting all researchers through the ForestPlots (30) data request protocol described in forestplots.net/ en/join-forestplots/working-with-data. Raw climate data can be accessed through the TerraClimate database at https://www. climatologylab.org/terraclimate.html (48). The SPEI data can be obtained from the SPEI database at https://spei.csic.es/ (83). The computer code used to reproduce the main findings in this manuscript (84) and the plot-level processed data (85) are archived in the Zenodo repository at https://zenodo.org/. License information: Copyright © 2025 the authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original US government works. https:// www.science.org/about/science-licenses-journal-article-reuse
Additional Links
Recommended Citation
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Fauset, S., Díaz, S., Rifai, S., Corral-Rivas, J., Nava-Miranda, M., González-M, R., Hurtado-M, A., Revilla, N., Vilanova, E., Almeida, E., de Oliveira, E., Alvarez-Davila, E., Alves, L., de Andrade, A., Lola da Costa, A., Vieira, S., Aragão, L., Arets, E., Aymard C, G., Baccaro, F., Bakker, Y., Baker, T., Bánki, O., Baraloto, C., de Camargo, P., Berenguer, E., Blanc, L., Bonal, D., & Bongers, F. (2025) 'Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change', Science (New York, N.Y.), 387(6738). Available at: 10.1126/science.adl5414
