Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change
Jesús Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, Sandra Dı́az, Sami W. Rifai, José Javier Corral‐Rivas, María Guadalupe Nava‐Miranda, Roy González‐M., Ana Belén Hurtado‐M, Norma Salinas, Emilio Vilanova, Everton Cristo de Almeida, Edmar Almeida de Oliveira, Esteban Álvarez‐Dávila, Luciana F. Alves, Ana Andrade, Antônio C. L. da Costa, Simone Aparecida Vieira, Luiz E. O. C. Aragão, E.J.M.M. Arets, Gerardo A. Aymard C., Fabrício Beggiato Baccaro, Yvonne Vanessa Bakker, Timothy R. Baker, Olaf Bánki, Christopher Baraloto, Plínio Barbosa de Camargo, Érika Berenguer, Lilian Blanc, Damien Bonal, Frans Bongers, Kauane Maiara Bordin, Roel Brienen, Foster Brown, Nayane Cristina Candida dos Santos Prestes, Carolina V. Castilho, Sabina Cerruto Ribeiro, Fernanda Coelho de Souza, James A. Comiskey, Fernando Cornejo Valverde, Sandra Cristina Müller, Richarlly da Costa Silva, Julio Daniel do Vale, Vitor de Andrade Kamimura, Ricardo de Oliveira Perdiz, Jhon del Águila Pasquel, Géraldine Derroire, Anthony Di Fiore, Mathias Disney, William Farfán-Ríos, Sophie Fauset, Ted R. Feldpausch, Rafael Flora Ramos, Gerardo Flores Llampazo, Valéria Forni Martins, Claire Fortunel, Karina García Cabrera, Jorcely Barroso, Bruno Hérault, Rafael Herrera, Eurídice N. Honorio Coronado, Isau Huamantupa‐Chuquimaco, John J. Pipoly, Kátia Janaína Zanini, E. Jiménez, Carlos Alfredo Joly, Michelle Kalamandeen, Joice Klipel, Aurora Levesley, Wilmar López Oviedo, William E. Magnusson, Rubens Manoel dos Santos, Beatriz Schwantes Marimon, Ben Hur Marimon, Simone Matias Reis, Omar Aurelio Melo Cruz, Abel Monteagudo Mendoza, Paulo S. Morandi, Robert Muscarella, Henrique Eduardo Mendonça Nascimento, David Neill, Imma Oliveras Menor, Walter A. Palacios, Sonia Palacios‐Ramos, Nadir Pallqui Camacho, Guido Pardo, R. Toby Pennington, Luciana de Oliveira Pereira, Georgia Pickavance, Rayana Caroline Picolotto, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Adriana Prieto, Carlos A. Quesada, Hirma Ramírez‐Angulo, Maxime Réjou‐Méchain, Zorayda Restrepo, José Manuel Reyna Huaymacari, Carlos Reynel, Gonzalo Rivas‐Torres, Anand Roopsind, Agustín Rudas, Beatriz Salgado‐Negret
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.