Abstract
The impacts of climate change on forest community composition are still not well known. Although directional trends in climate change and community composition change were reported in recent years, further quantitative analyses are urgently needed. Previous studies focused on measuring population growth rates in a single time period, neglecting the development of the populations. Here we aimed to compose a method for calculating the community composition change, and to testify the impacts of climate change on community composition change within a relatively short period (several decades) based on long-term monitoring data from two plots—Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve, China (DBR) and Barro Colorado Island, Panama (BCI)—that are located in tropical and subtropical regions. We proposed a relatively more concise index, Slnλ, which refers to an overall population growth rate based on the dominant species in a community. The results indicated that the population growth rate of a majority of populations has decreased over the past few decades. This decrease was mainly caused by population development. The increasing temperature had a positive effect on population growth rates and community change rates. Our results promote understanding and explaining variations in population growth rates and community composition rates, and are helpful to predict population dynamics and population responses to climate change.
Highlights
It has been widely predicted that global climate change will affect biodiversity [1,2,3], species distribution and population growth [4,5,6]
In DBR, except for C. chinensis and C. concinna in community II, the population growth rates of the other species in the two communities decreased over time (Fig 2A and 2B)
We analysed the distribution of the change rates for population growth rate in BCI, and the results showed that the population growth rates for most species (84.4%; 65 of 77 species) decreased (Figs 2C and 3A), with 27.7% of those species showing a significant decrease
Summary
It has been widely predicted that global climate change will affect biodiversity [1,2,3], species distribution and population growth [4,5,6]. As indispensable resources on Earth, have tremendous ecological, economic, social, and aesthetic value. Tree species distribution and forest composition will undergo substantial shifts in the future [7,8,9,10,11]. Changes in forest community composition may exert impacts on net primary productivity and carbon storage [12, 13]. It is essential to determine how climate factors influence forest population growth and community composition [14].
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