Abstract
Epiphytes are strongly dependent on the conditions created by their host's traits and a certain degree of specificity is expected between them, even if these species are largely abundant in a series of tree hosts of a given environment, as in the case of atmospheric bromeliads. Despite their considerable abundance in these environments, we hypothesize that stochasticity alone cannot explain the presence and abundance of atmospheric bromeliads on host trees, since host traits could have a greater influence on the establishment of these bromeliads. We used secondary and reforested seasonal forests and three distinct silvicultures to test whether species richness, phylogenetic diversity and functional diversity of trees can predict the differential presence, abundance and distribution of atmospheric bromeliads on hosts. We compared the observed parameters of their assemblage with null models and performed successive variance hierarchic partitions of abundance and distribution of the assemblage to detect the influence of multiple traits of the tree hosts. Our results do not indicate direct relationships between the abundance of atmospheric bromeliads and phylogenetic or functional diversity of trees, but instead indicate that bromeliads occurred on fewer tree species than expected by chance. We distinguished functional tree patterns that can improve or reduce the abundance of atmospheric bromeliads, and change their distribution on branches and trunk. While individual tree traits are related to increased abundance, species traits are related to the canopy distribution of atmospheric bromeliad assemblages. A balance among these tree functional patterns drives the atmospheric bromeliad assemblage of the forest patches.
Highlights
About 9 % of vascular plants are mechanically dependent on other plants (Benzing 1990; Zotz 2013), and for this reason, they are important elements of many ecosystems, in the neotropics
A strict host tree specificity or a completely random host tree selection is rare, many works report the existence of host preference and host limitation in epiphyte communities
We found four species of atmospheric bromeliads at our patches of sampled vegetation: Tillandsia recurvata, T. pohliana, T. tricholepsis and T. loliacea [see Supporting Information—Fig. S4]
Summary
About 9 % of vascular plants (nearly 30 000 species) are mechanically dependent on other plants (Benzing 1990; Zotz 2013), and for this reason, they are important elements of many ecosystems, in the neotropics. The epiphytic assemblages provide a remarkable system to evaluate species-specific interactions in plants, since their hosts are capable of facilitating or limiting their fixation and reproduction (Callaway et al 2002; Steel and Wilson 2003; Wagner et al 2015). Given the particularity of each host tree and the niche differences of epiphytic species, a certain degree of specificity is expected between. Chaves et al — Host traits combinations and atmospheric bromeliad assemblages A strict host tree specificity or a completely random host tree selection is rare, many works report the existence of host preference (i.e. a greater abundance of a epiphyte species on a few host species; e.g. ter Steege and Cornelissen 1989) and host limitation (i.e. a concentration of individuals of a epiphyte species on a few host species as a result of limiting factors of the other tree species; e.g. Vergara-Torres et al 2010) in epiphyte communities
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