One sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is dependent on river floodplains

John Ethan Householder (1) , Florian Wittmann (1, 2) , Jochen Schöngart (2) , Maria Teresa Fernandez Piedade (2) , Wolfgang J Junk (3) , Edgardo Manuel Latrubesse (4) , Adriano Costa Quaresma (1, 2) , Layon O Demarchi (2) , Guilherme de S. Lobo (2) , Daniel P P De Aguiar (2) , Rafael L Assis , Aline Lopes , Pia Parolin , Iêda Leão Do Amaral , Luiz de Souza Coelho , Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos , Diógenes de Andrade Lima Filho , Rafael P Salomão , Carolina V Castilho , Juan Ernesto Guevara-Andino , Marcelo de Jesus Veiga Carim , Oliver L Phillips , Dairon Cárdenas López , William E Magnusson , Daniel Sabatier (5) , Juan David Cardenas Revilla , Jean-François Molino (5) , Mariana Victória Irume , Maria Pires Martins , José Renan da Silva Guimarães , José Ferreira Ramos , Domingos de Jesus Rodrigues , Olaf S Bánki , Carlos A Peres , Nigel C A Pitman , Joseph E Hawes , Everton José Almeida , Luciane Ferreira Barbosa , Larissa Cavalheiro , Márcia Cléia Vilela dos Santos , Bruno Garcia Luize , Evlyn Márcia Moraes de Leão Novo , Percy Núñez Vargas , Thiago Sanna Freire Silva , Eduardo Martins Venticinque , Angelo Gilberto Manzatto , Neidiane Farias Costa Reis , John Terborgh , Katia Regina Casula , Flávia R C Costa , Euridice N Honorio Coronado , Abel Monteagudo Mendoza , Juan Carlos Montero , Ted R Feldpausch , Gerardo A Aymard C , Chris Baraloto , Nicolás Castaño Arboleda , Julien Engel (5) , Pascal Petronelli , Charles Eugene Zartman , Timothy J Killeen , Lorena Maniguaje Rincón , Beatriz S Marimon , Ben Hur Marimon-Junior , Juliana Schietti , Thaiane R Sousa , Rodolfo Vasquez , Bonifacio Mostacedo , Dário Dantas Do Amaral , Hernán Castellanos , Marcelo Brilhante De Medeiros , Marcelo Fragomeni Simon , Ana Andrade , José Luís Camargo , William F Laurance , Susan G W Laurance , Emanuelle de Sousa Farias , Maria Aparecida Lopes , José Leonardo Lima Magalhães , Henrique Eduardo Mendonça Nascimento , Helder Lima De Queiroz , Roel Brienen , Pablo R Stevenson , Alejandro Araujo-Murakami , Tim R Baker , Bruno Barçante Ladvocat Cintra , Yuri Oliveira Feitosa , Hugo F Mogollón , Janaína Costa Noronha , Flávia Rodrigues Barbosa , Rainiellen de Sá Carpanedo , Joost F Duivenvoorden , Miles R Silman , Leandro Valle Ferreira , Carolina Levis , José Rafael Lozada , James A Comiskey , Freddie C Draper , José Julio De Toledo , Gabriel Damasco , Nállarett Dávila , Roosevelt García-Villacorta , Alberto Vicentini , Fernando Cornejo Valverde , Alfonso Alonso , Luzmila Arroyo , Francisco Dallmeier , Vitor H F Gomes , Eliana M Jimenez , David Neill , Maria Cristina Peñuela Mora , Fernanda Antunes Carvalho , Fernanda Coelho de Souza , Kenneth J Feeley , Rogerio Gribel , Marcelo Petratti Pansonato , Marcos Ríos Paredes , Jos Barlow , Erika Berenguer , Kyle G Dexter , Joice Ferreira , Paul V A Fine , Marcelino Carneiro Guedes , Isau Huamantupa-Chuquimaco , Juan Carlos Licona , Toby Pennington , Boris Eduardo Villa Zegarra , Vincent Antoine Vos , Carlos Cerón , Émile Fonty , Terry W Henkel , Paul Maas , Edwin Pos , Marcos Silveira , Juliana Stropp , Raquel Thomas , Doug Daly , William Milliken , Guido Pardo Molina , Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira , Bianca Weiss Albuquerque , Wegliane Campelo , Thaise Emilio , Alfredo Fuentes , Bente Klitgaard , José Luis Marcelo Pena , Priscila F Souza , J. Sebastián Tello , Corine Vriesendorp , Jerome Chave , Anthony Di Fiore , Renato Richard Hilário , Luciana de Oliveira Pereira , Juan Fernando Phillips , Gonzalo Rivas-Torres , Tinde R van Andel , Patricio von Hildebrand , William Balee , Edelcilio Marques Barbosa , Luiz Carlos de Matos Bonates , Hilda Paulette Dávila Doza , Ricardo Zárate Gómez , Therany Gonzales , George Pepe Gallardo Gonzales , Bruce Hoffman , André Braga Junqueira , Yadvinder Malhi , Ires Paula de Andrade Miranda , Linder Felipe Mozombite-Pinto , Adriana Prieto , Agustín Rudas , Ademir R Ruschel , Natalino Silva , César I A Vela , Stanford Zent , Egleé L Zent , Angela Cano , Yrma Andreina Carrero Márquez , Diego F Correa , Janaina Barbosa Pedrosa Costa , Bernardo Monteiro Flores , David Galbraith , Milena Holmgren , Michelle Kalamandeen , Marcelo Trindade Nascimento , Alexandre A Oliveira , Hirma Ramirez-Angulo , Maira Rocha , Veridiana Vizoni Scudeller , Rodrigo Sierra , Milton Tirado , Maria Natalia Umaña , Geertje van der Heijden , Emilio Vilanova Torre , Manuel Augusto Ahuite Reategui , Cláudia Baider , Henrik Balslev , Sasha Cárdenas , Luisa Fernanda Casas , William Farfan-Rios , Cid Ferreira , Reynaldo Linares-Palomino , Casimiro Mendoza , Italo Mesones , Germaine Alexander Parada , Armando Torres-Lezama , Ligia Estela Urrego Giraldo , Daniel Villarroel , Roderick Zagt , Miguel N Alexiades , Edmar Almeida de Oliveira , Karina Garcia-Cabrera , Lionel Hernandez , Walter Palacios Cuenca , Susamar Pansini , Daniela Pauletto , Freddy Ramirez Arevalo , Adeilza Felipe Sampaio , Elvis H Valderrama Sandoval (6) , Luis Valenzuela Gamarra (7) , Hans ter Steege (8, 9)

1 KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
2 INPA - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia = National Institute of Amazonian Research
3 UFMT - Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso
4 Federal University of Goiás [Jataí]
5 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
6 UNAP - Universidad Nacional de la Amazonía Peruana [Loreto, Perou]
7 Missouri Botanical Garden
8 Naturalis Biodiversity Center [Leiden]
9 Universiteit Utrecht / Utrecht University [Utrecht]

Amazonia’s floodplain system is the largest and most biodiverse on Earth. Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, our understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is still far too limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree communities and the critical ecosystem functions they underpin. Here we address this gap by taking a spatially explicit look at Amazonia-wide patterns of tree-species turnover and ecological specialization of the region’s floodplain forests. We show that the majority of Amazonian tree species can inhabit floodplains, and about a sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is ecologically specialized on floodplains. The degree of specialization in floodplain communities is driven by regional flood patterns, with the most compositionally differentiated floodplain forests located centrally within the fluvial network and contingent on the most extraordinary flood magnitudes regionally. Our results provide a spatially explicit view of ecological specialization of floodplain forest communities and expose the need for whole-basin hydrological integrity to protect the Amazon’s tree diversity and its function.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Community ecology; Amazonia

Domains: Environmental Sciences

John Ethan Householder, Florian Wittmann, Jochen Schöngart, Maria Teresa Fernandez Piedade, Wolfgang J Junk, et al.. One sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is dependent on river floodplains. Nature Ecology & Evolution, inPress, ⟨10.1038/s41559-024-02364-1⟩. ⟨hal-04538210⟩