Summary
This large-scale analysis of 5433 tree species across 1877 Amazonian inventory plots reveals distinct geographic patterns in seed dispersal modes correlated with environmental conditions. Abiotic dispersal modes (wind and water) showed strong associations with their respective environmental drivers, supporting the disperser-availability hypothesis, whilst resource availability for constructing zoochorous fruits was not a consistent predictor. The findings suggest that local environmental conditions, rather than fruit-construction constraints, shape the functional composition of Amazonian tree communities.
Regional applicability
This research is geographically restricted to Amazonian lowland rainforests and the Guiana Shield. The findings on how environmental conditions (wind speed, flooding regime) shape dispersal mode distributions may inform understanding of tree assembly processes in tropical forests more broadly, but direct application to United Kingdom temperate systems would be limited. However, the methodological approach to linking functional traits with environmental gradients could inform UK woodland ecology research.
Key measures
Proportional abundance of dispersal modes across forest types; mean pairwise distance (MPD) phylogenetic dissimilarity; generalised linear models of wind speed, flooding, and fruit-construction resource availability as predictors
Outcomes reported
The study examined geographic patterns in the proportional abundance of four tree dispersal modes (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory, hydrochory) across 1877 Amazonian forest inventory plots and tested hypotheses about dispersal agent and resource availability as drivers. Anemochory was positively associated with mean annual wind speed, hydrochory was higher in flooded forests, and endozoochory dominated in terra-firme forests.
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