Volume 241, Issue 3 p. 1035-1046
Full paper

Flower production decreases with warmer and more humid atmospheric conditions in a western Amazonian forest

Jason Vleminckx

Corresponding Author

Jason Vleminckx

Department of Biology of Organisms, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1050 Belgium

Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511 USA

School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511 USA

Author for correspondence:

Jason Vleminckx

Email[email protected]

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J. Aaron Hogan

J. Aaron Hogan

Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611 USA

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Margaret R. Metz

Margaret R. Metz

Department of Biology, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, 97219 USA

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Liza S. Comita

Liza S. Comita

School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511 USA

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Simon A. Queenborough

Simon A. Queenborough

School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511 USA

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S. Joseph Wright

S. Joseph Wright

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado, Balboa, 0843-03092 Panama

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Renato Valencia

Renato Valencia

Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, 170143 Ecuador

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Milton Zambrano

Milton Zambrano

Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, 170143 Ecuador

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Nancy C. Garwood

Nancy C. Garwood

School of Biological Sciences, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA

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First published: 20 November 2023
Citations: 1

Summary

  • Climate models predict that everwet western Amazonian forests will face warmer and wetter atmospheric conditions, and increased cloud cover. It remains unclear how these changes will impact plant reproductive performance, such as flowering, which plays a central role in sustaining food webs and forest regeneration. Warmer and wetter nights may cause reduced flower production, via increased dark respiration rates or alteration in the reliability of flowering cue-based processes. Additionally, more persistent cloud cover should reduce the amounts of solar irradiance, which could limit flower production.
  • We tested whether interannual variation in flower production has changed in response to fluctuations in irradiance, rainfall, temperature, and relative humidity over 18 yrs in an everwet forest in Ecuador.
  • Analyses of 184 plant species showed that flower production declined as nighttime temperature and relative humidity increased, suggesting that warmer nights and greater atmospheric water saturation negatively impacted reproduction. Species varied in their flowering responses to climatic variables but this variation was not explained by life form or phylogeny.
  • Our results shed light on how plant communities will respond to climatic changes in this everwet region, in which the impacts of these changes have been poorly studied compared with more seasonal Neotropical areas.

Data availability

The data supporting the results are archived in a Harvard Dataverse repository at doi: 10.7910/DVN/PCGFMZ.