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Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?

For tropical forests to survive anthropogenic global warming, trees will need to avoid rising temperatures through range shifts and “species migrations” or tolerate the newly emerging conditions through adaptation and/or acclimation. In this literature review, we synthesize the available knowledge t...

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Autores principales: Feeley, Kenneth J., Bernal-Escobar, Manuel, Fortier, Riley, Kullberg, Alyssa T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10490527/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37687387
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12173142
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author Feeley, Kenneth J.
Bernal-Escobar, Manuel
Fortier, Riley
Kullberg, Alyssa T.
author_facet Feeley, Kenneth J.
Bernal-Escobar, Manuel
Fortier, Riley
Kullberg, Alyssa T.
author_sort Feeley, Kenneth J.
collection PubMed
description For tropical forests to survive anthropogenic global warming, trees will need to avoid rising temperatures through range shifts and “species migrations” or tolerate the newly emerging conditions through adaptation and/or acclimation. In this literature review, we synthesize the available knowledge to show that although many tropical tree species are shifting their distributions to higher, cooler elevations, the rates of these migrations are too slow to offset ongoing changes in temperatures, especially in lowland tropical rainforests where thermal gradients are shallow or nonexistent. We also show that the rapidity and severity of global warming make it unlikely that tropical tree species can adapt (with some possible exceptions). We argue that the best hope for tropical tree species to avoid becoming “committed to extinction” is individual-level acclimation. Although several new methods are being used to test for acclimation, we unfortunately still do not know if tropical tree species can acclimate, how acclimation abilities vary between species, or what factors may prevent or facilitate acclimation. Until all of these questions are answered, our ability to predict the fate of tropical species and tropical forests—and the many services that they provide to humanity—remains critically impaired.
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spelling pubmed-104905272023-09-09 Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They? Feeley, Kenneth J. Bernal-Escobar, Manuel Fortier, Riley Kullberg, Alyssa T. Plants (Basel) Review For tropical forests to survive anthropogenic global warming, trees will need to avoid rising temperatures through range shifts and “species migrations” or tolerate the newly emerging conditions through adaptation and/or acclimation. In this literature review, we synthesize the available knowledge to show that although many tropical tree species are shifting their distributions to higher, cooler elevations, the rates of these migrations are too slow to offset ongoing changes in temperatures, especially in lowland tropical rainforests where thermal gradients are shallow or nonexistent. We also show that the rapidity and severity of global warming make it unlikely that tropical tree species can adapt (with some possible exceptions). We argue that the best hope for tropical tree species to avoid becoming “committed to extinction” is individual-level acclimation. Although several new methods are being used to test for acclimation, we unfortunately still do not know if tropical tree species can acclimate, how acclimation abilities vary between species, or what factors may prevent or facilitate acclimation. Until all of these questions are answered, our ability to predict the fate of tropical species and tropical forests—and the many services that they provide to humanity—remains critically impaired. MDPI 2023-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10490527/ /pubmed/37687387 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12173142 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Feeley, Kenneth J.
Bernal-Escobar, Manuel
Fortier, Riley
Kullberg, Alyssa T.
Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?
title Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?
title_full Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?
title_fullStr Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?
title_full_unstemmed Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?
title_short Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures—But Can They?
title_sort tropical trees will need to acclimate to rising temperatures—but can they?
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10490527/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37687387
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12173142
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