Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests

Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Jesús and Rifai, Sami W. and Deng, Xiongjie and ter Steege, Hans and Thomson, Eleanor and Corral-Rivas, Jose Javier and Guimaraes, Aretha Franklin and Muller, Sandra and Klipel, Joice and Fauset, Sophie and Resende, Angelica F. and Wallin, Göran and Joly, Carlos A. and Abernethy, Katharine and Adu-Bredu, Stephen and Alexandre Silva, Celice and de Oliveira, Edmar Almeida and Almeida, Danilo R. A. and Alvarez-Davila, Esteban and Asner, Gregory P. and Baker, Timothy R. and Benchimol, Maíra and Bentley, Lisa Patrick and Berenguer, Erika and Blanc, Lilian and Bonal, Damien and Bordin, Kauane and Borges de Lima, Robson and Both, Sabine and Cabezas Duarte, Jaime and Cardoso, Domingos and de Lima, Haroldo C. and Cavalheiro, Larissa and Cernusak, Lucas A. and dos Santos Prestes, Nayane Cristina C. and da Silva Zanzini, Antonio Carlos and da Silva, Ricardo José and dos Santos Alves da Silva, Robson and de Andrade Iguatemy, Mariana and De Sousa Oliveira, Tony César and Dechant, Benjamin and Derroire, Géraldine and Dexter, Kyle G. and Rodrigues, Domingos J. and Espírito-Santo, Mário and Silva, Letícia Fernandes and Domingues, Tomas Ferreira and Ferreira, Joice and Simon, Marcelo Fragomeni and Girardin, Cécile A. J. and Hérault, Bruno and Jeffery, Kathryn J. and Kalpuzha Ashtamoorthy, Sreejith and Kavidapadinjattathil Sivadasan, Arunkumar and Klitgaard, Bente and Laurance, William F. and Dan, Maurício Lima and Magnusson, William E. and Campos-Filho, Eduardo Malta and Manoel dos Santos, Rubens and Manzatto, Angelo Gilberto and Silveira, Marcos and Marimon-Junior, Ben Hur and Martin, Roberta E. and Vieira, Daniel Luis Mascia and Metzker, Thiago and Milliken, William and Moonlight, Peter and Moraes de Seixas, Marina Maria and Morandi, Paulo S. and Muscarella, Robert and Nava-Miranda, María Guadalupe and Nyirambangutse, Brigitte and Silva, Jhonathan Oliveira and Oliveras Menor, Imma and Francisco Pena Rodrigues, Pablo José and Pereira de Oliveira, Cinthia and Pereira Zanzini, Lucas and Peres, Carlos A. and Punjayil, Vignesh and Quesada, Carlos A. and Réjou-Méchain, Maxime and Riutta, Terhi and Rivas-Torres, Gonzalo and Rosa, Clarissa and Salinas, Norma and Bergamin, Rodrigo Scarton and Marimon, Beatriz Schwantes and Shenkin, Alexander and Silva Rodrigues, Priscyla Maria and Figueiredo, Axa Emanuelle Simões and Garcia, Queila Souza and Spósito, Tereza and Storck-Tonon, Danielle and Sullivan, Martin J. P. and Svátek, Martin and Vieira Santiago, Wagner Tadeu and Arn Teh, Yit and Theruvil Parambil Sivan, Prasad and Nascimento, Marcelo Trindade and Veenendaal, Elmar and Zo-Bi, Irie Casimir and Dago, Marie Ruth and Traoré, Soulemane and Patacca, Marco and Badouard, Vincyane and de Padua Chaves e Carvalho, Samuel and White, Lee J. T. and Zhang-Zheng, Huanyuan and Zibera, Etienne and Zwerts, Joeri Alexander and Burslem, David F. R. P. and Silman, Miles and Chave, Jérôme and Enquist, Brian J. and Barlow, Jos and Phillips, Oliver L. and Coomes, David A. and Malhi, Yadvinder (2025) Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests. Nature. ISSN 0028-0836

Abstract

Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy1,2. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties3. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically4. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.