TY - JOUR
T1 - Resource acquisition and reproductive strategies of tropical forest in response to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation
AU - Detto, Matteo
AU - Wright, S. Joseph
AU - Calderón, Osvaldo
AU - Muller-Landau, Helene C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the largest source of interannual climate variability in much of the tropics. We hypothesize that tropical plants exhibit interannual variation in reproduction and resource acquisition strategies driven by ENSO that mirrors their seasonal responses. We analyze the relationship of leaf and seed fall to climate variation over 30 years in a seasonally dry tropical forest in Panama where El Niño brings warm, dry, and sunny conditions. Elevated leaf fall precedes the onset of El Niño, and elevated seed production follows, paralleling associations with dry seasons. Our results provide evidence of a shift in allocation from leafing to fruiting in response to a warming phase of ENSO. This shift may enable plants to take advantage of higher light availability, while coping with higher atmospheric water demand and lower water supply. These findings might be an indicator of adaptive strategies to optimize reproduction and resource acquisition.
AB - The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the largest source of interannual climate variability in much of the tropics. We hypothesize that tropical plants exhibit interannual variation in reproduction and resource acquisition strategies driven by ENSO that mirrors their seasonal responses. We analyze the relationship of leaf and seed fall to climate variation over 30 years in a seasonally dry tropical forest in Panama where El Niño brings warm, dry, and sunny conditions. Elevated leaf fall precedes the onset of El Niño, and elevated seed production follows, paralleling associations with dry seasons. Our results provide evidence of a shift in allocation from leafing to fruiting in response to a warming phase of ENSO. This shift may enable plants to take advantage of higher light availability, while coping with higher atmospheric water demand and lower water supply. These findings might be an indicator of adaptive strategies to optimize reproduction and resource acquisition.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-03306-9
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-03306-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 29500347
AN - SCOPUS:85042769253
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 913
ER -