Abstract: Estimates of extinction risk for Amazonian plant and animal species are rare and not often incorporated into land-use policy and conservation planning. We overlay spatial distribution models with historical and projected deforestation to show that at least 36% and up to 57% of all Amazonian tree species are likely to qualify as globally threatened under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. If confirmed, these results would increase the number of threatened plant species on Earth by 22%. We show that the trends observed in Amazonia apply to trees throughout the tropics, and we predict that most of the world’s >40,000 tropical tree species now qualify as globally threatened. A gap analysis suggests that existing Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories will protect viable populations of most threatened species if these areas suffer no further degradation, highlighting the key roles that protected areas, indigenous peoples, and improved governance can play in preventing large-scale extinctions in the tropics in this century.

Abstract: Essential oil from the Amazonian rosewood tree (Aniba rosaeodora Ducke) is valued as an important aromatic ingredient in luxury perfumes. Due to over-harvesting in recent decades, rosewood is now listed as an endangered species. Rosewood tree planting is now considered a viable alternative to logging as it can support both reforestation and sustainable agriculture thanks to sales of the essential oil extracted. We planted 605 rosewood trees in French Guiana from two seeds of local provenance, in a 5 445 m2 plot surrounded by primary forest. Nine years after planting, we assessed the effect of the position of the tree relative to the surrounding forest and of the seed provenance on dendrometric traits (height, circumference, above ground woody biomass) and hence on the yield of essential oil. Measurements were made on 99 trees. Average growth rates for the young trees were 0.7 m/year in height, 2.5 cm/year in stem circumference and 990.5 kg dry mass/ha/year in aboveground biomass, while essential oil yields ranged from 0.6% to 3.6% with a mean of 2.1%. The position of the tree relative to the surrounding forest was the main factor affecting tree growth and essential oil production: trees located close to the surrounding forest were significantly smaller and accumulated less essential oil due to the reduced availability of light. Seed provenance had less effect on dendrometric traits and essential oil yields. In conclusion, although planting practices will need to be adapted to avoid the edge effects of proximity to the forest, short-rotation cultivation of rosewood trees could be the optimum and most economically attractive system for the production of essential oil.

Abstract: Understanding how plants are constructed; i.e., how key size dimensions and the amount of mass invested in different tissues varies among individuals; is essential for modeling plant growth, estimating carbon stocks, and mapping energy fluxes in the terrestrial biosphere. Allocation patterns can differ through ontogeny, but also among coexisting species and among species adapted to different environments. While a variety of models dealing with biomass allocation exist, we lack a synthetic understanding of the underlying processes. This is partly due to the lack of suitable data sets for validating and parameterizing models. To that end, we present the Biomass and allometry database (BAAD) for woody plants. The BAAD contains 259 634 measurements collected in 176 different studies, from 21 084 individuals across 678 species. Most of these data come from existing publications. However, raw data were rarely made public at time of publication. Thus the BAAD contains individual level data from different studies, transformed into standard units and variable names. The transformations were achieved using a common workflow for all raw data files. Other features that distinguish the BAAD are: (i) measurements were for individual plants rather than stand averages; (ii) individuals spanning a range of sizes were measured; (iii) inclusion of plants from 0.01-100 m in height; and (iii) biomass was estimated directly, i.e., not indirectly via allometric equations (except in very large trees where biomass was estimated from detailed subsampling). We included both wild and artificially grown plants. The data set contains the following size metrics: total leaf area; area of stem crosssection including sapwood, heartwood, and bark; height of plant and crown base, crown area, and surface area; and the dry mass of leaf, stem, branches, sapwood, heartwood, bark, coarse roots, and fine root tissues. We also report other properties of individuals (age, leaf size, leaf mass per area, wood density, nitrogen content of leaves and wood), as well as information about the growing environment (location, light, experimental treatment, vegetation type) where available. It is our hope that making these data available will improve our ability to understand plant growth, ecosystem dynamics, and carbon cycling in the world's vegetation.

Abstract: Many recent studies have searched to integrate species’ functions and phylogenies in the measurement of biodiversity. To obtain easily interpretable measures, some researchers recommended diversity indices expressed in terms of equivalent numbers of species: the number of equally likely and maximally dissimilar species needed to produce the given value of diversity. Then, biodiversity is often calculated at three scales: within communities (α diversity), among communities (β diversity) and in a region (γ diversity). These three scales are, however, insufficient to tackle the organization of biodiversity in space because, for most organisms, there is a nested hierarchy of multiple scales characterized by different patterns and processes, from the small neighbourhood to the biosphere. We developed methodologies for analysing species, functional, taxonomic or phylogenetic diversity in a hierarchy of multiple scales using equivalent numbers of species. As an example, we analysed the taxonomic and functional diversity of macroinvertebrate assemblages in the Loire River, France, at four levels: within sites (α diversity), among sites within geological regions (β1 diversity), among geological regions (β2 diversity) and at the river scale (γ diversity). The new hierarchical approaches of biodiversity revealed very low differences among sites within regions and among regions in terms of taxonomy and functional traits (size and diet), despite moderate, significant species turnover among geological regions. We compare our framework with those other authors have developed. We argue that different definitions of α, β, γ diversities are used in the literature reflecting different points of view on biodiversity. We make recommendations on how to normalize functional (or phylogenetic) dissimilarities among species to render sites and regions comparable, and discuss the pros and cons of our approach. The hierarchical approaches of biodiversity in terms of ‘equivalent numbers’ respond to current demands to obtain intuitive, easily interpretable components of biodiversity. The approaches we propose go beyond current developments by considering a hierarchy of spatial scales and unbalanced sampling design. They will provide powerful tools to detect the ecological and evolutionary processes that act differently at different scales. © 2016 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution © 2016 British Ecological Society

Abstract: Phenotypic traits and their associated trade-offs have been shown to have globally consistent effects on individual plant physiological functions, but how these effects scale up to influence competition, a key driver of community assembly in terrestrial vegetation, has remained unclear. Here we use growth data from more than 3 million trees in over 140,000 plots across the world to show how three key functional traits – wood density, specific leaf area and maximum height – consistently influence competitive interactions. Fast maximum growth of a species was correlated negatively with its wood density in all biomes, and positively with its specific leaf area in most biomes. Low wood density was also correlated with a low ability to tolerate competition and a low competitive effect on neighbours, while high specific leaf area was correlated with a low competitive effect. Thus, traits generate trade-offs between performance with competition versus performance without competition, a fundamental ingredient in the classical hypothesis that the coexistence of plant species is enabled via differentiation in their successional strategies. Competition within species was stronger than between species, but an increase in trait dissimilarity between species had little influence in weakening competition. No benefit of dissimilarity was detected for specific leaf area or wood density, and only a weak benefit for maximum height. Our trait-based approach to modelling competition makes generalization possible across the forest ecosystems of the world and their highly diverse species composition. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.