Forest Age Rivals Climate to Explain Reproductive Allocation Patterns in Forest Ecosystems Globally.

ABSTRACT: Forest allocation of net primary productivity (NPP) to reproduction (carbon required for flowers, fruits, and seeds) is poorly quantified globally, despite its critical role in forest regeneration and a well-supported trade-off with allocation to growth. Here, we present the first global synthesis of a biometric proxy for forest reproductive allocation (RA) across environmental and stand age gradients from a compiled dataset of 824 observations across 393 sites. We find that ecosystem-scale RA increases ~60% from boreal to tropical forests. Climate shows important non-linear relationships with RA, but is not the sole predictor. Forest age effects are comparable to climate in magnitude (MAT: ß = 0.24, p = 0.021; old growth forest: ß = 0.22, p < 0.001), while metrics of soil fertility show s

SUBMITTER: Ward RE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12377453 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature