Woody plant taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity decrease along elevational gradients in Andean tropical montane forests: Environmental filtering and arrival of temperate taxa.

ABSTRACT: Mountains are paramount for exploring biodiversity patterns due to the mosaic of topographies and climates encompassed over short distances. Biodiversity research has traditionally focused on taxonomic diversity when investigating changes along elevational gradients, but other facets should be considered. For first time, we simultaneously assessed elevational trends in taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of woody plants in Andean tropical montane forests and explored their underlying ecological and evolutionary causes. This investigation covered four transects (traversing ca. 2200 m a.s.l.) encompassing 114 plots of 0.1 ha across a broad latitudinal range (ca. 10°). Using Hill numbers to quantify abundance-based diversity among 37,869 individuals we observed a c

SUBMITTER: Banares-de-Dios G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11390605 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature