Limits to reproduction and seed size-number trade-offs that shape forest dominance and future recovery

Tong Qiu (1) , Robert Andrus (2) , Marie-Claire Aravena (3) , Davide Ascoli (4) , Yves Bergeron (5) , Roberta Berretti (4) , Daniel Berveiller (6) , Michal Bogdziewicz (7) , Thomas Boivin (8) , Raul Bonal (9) , Don Bragg (10) , Thomas Caignard (11) , Rafael Calama (12) , J. Julio Camarero (13) , Chia-Hao Chang-Yang (14) , Natalie Cleavitt (15) , Benoit Courbaud (16) , Francois Courbet (8) , Thomas Curt (17) , Adrian Das (18) , Evangelia Daskalakou , Hendrik Davi (8) , Nicolas Delpierre (6) , Sylvain Delzon (11) , Michael Dietze (19) , Sergio Donoso Calderon (3) , Laurent Dormont (20) , Josep Espelta (21) , Timothy Fahey (15) , William Farfan-Rios (22) , Catherine Gehring (23) , Gregory Gilbert (24) , Georg Gratzer (25) , Cathryn Greenberg (26) , Qinfeng Guo (26) , Andrew Hacket-Pain (27) , Arndt Hampe (11) , Qingmin Han (28) , Janneke Hille Ris Lambers (29) , Kazuhiko Hoshizaki (30) , Ines Ibanez (31) , Jill Johnstone (32) , Valentin Journé (16) , Daisuke Kabeya (28) , Christopher Kilner (1) , Thomas Kitzberger (33) , Johannes Knops (34) , Richard Kobe (35) , Georges Kunstler (16) , Jonathan Lageard (36) , Jalene Lamontagne (37) , Mateusz Ledwon (38) , Francois Lefèvre (8) , Diana Macias (39) , Eliot Mcintire , Christopher Moore (40) , Emily Moran , Renzo Motta , Jonathan Myers , Thomas Nagel , Kyotaro Noguchi , Jean-Marc Ourcival , Robert Parmenter , Ian Pearse , Ignacio Perez-Ramos , Lukasz Piechnik , John Poulsen (1) , Renata Poulton-Kamakura (1) , Miranda Redmond , Chantal Reid (1) , Kyle Rodman , Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez , Javier Sanguinetti , C. Lane Scher (1) , William Schlesinger (1) , Harald Schmidt van Marle , Barbara Seget , Shubhi Sharma (1) , Miles Silman , Michael Steele , Nathan Stephenson , Jacob Straub , I-Fang Sun , Samantha Sutton (1) , Jennifer Swenson (1) , Margaret Swift (1) , Peter Thomas , Maria Uriarte , Giorgio Vacchiano , Thomas Veblen , Amy Whipple , Thomas Whitham , Andreas Wion , Boyd Wright , S. Joseph Wright , Kai Zhu , Jess Zimmerman , Roman Zlotin , Magdalena Zywiec (38) , James Clark (1, 16)

1 Nicholas School of the Environment
2 University of Colorado [Boulder]
3 UCHILE - Universidad de Chile = University of Chile [Santiago]
4 UNITO - Università degli studi di Torino = University of Turin
5 UQAT - Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue
6 ESE - Ecologie Systématique et Evolution
7 UAM - Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu = Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
8 URFM - Ecologie des Forêts Méditerranéennes
9 UCM - Universidad Complutense de Madrid = Complutense University of Madrid [Madrid]
10 USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station
11 BioGeCo - Biodiversité, Gènes & Communautés
12 INIA-CIFOR - Centro de Investigacion Forestal
13 IPE - CSIC - Instituto Pirenaico de Ecologìa = Pyrenean Institute of Ecology [Zaragoza]
14 NSYSU - National Sun Yat-sen University
15 Cornell University [New York]
16 UR LESSEM - Laboratoire des EcoSystèmes et des Sociétés en Montagne
17 RECOVER - Risques, Ecosystèmes, Vulnérabilité, Environnement, Résilience
18 USGS - United States Geological Survey
19 BU - Boston University [Boston]
20 CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive
21 CREAF - Centre for Ecological Research and Applied Forestries
22 WUSTL - Washington University in Saint Louis
23 Northern Arizona University [Flagstaff]
24 UC Santa Cruz - University of California [Santa Cruz]
25 Institute of Forest Ecology
26 USDA - United States Department of Agriculture
27 University of Liverpool
28 FFPRI - Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute
29 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]
30 Akita University
31 University of Michigan [Dearborn]
32 University of Alaska [Anchorage]
33 UNCOMA - Universidad Nacional del Comahue [Neuquén]
34 Xjtu - Xi'an Jiaotong University
35 Michigan State University [East Lansing]
36 University of Manchester [Manchester]
37 DePaul University [Chicago]
38 PAN - Polska Akademia Nauk = Polish Academy of Sciences = Académie polonaise des sciences
39 The University of New Mexico [Albuquerque]
40 Colby College

The relationships that control seed production in trees are fundamental to understanding the evolution of forest species and their capacity to recover from increasing losses to drought, fire, and harvest. A synthesis of fecundity data from 714 species worldwide allowed us to examine hypotheses that are central to quantifying reproduction, a foundation for assessing fitness in forest trees. Four major findings emerged. First, seed production is not constrained by a strict trade-off between seed size and numbers. Instead, seed numbers vary over ten orders of magnitude, with species that invest in large seeds producing more seeds than expected from the 1:1 trade-off. Second, gymnosperms have lower seed production than angiosperms, potentially due to their extra investments in protective woody cones. Third, nutrient-demanding species, indicated by high foliar phosphorus concentrations, have low seed production. Finally, sensitivity of individual species to soil fertility varies widely, limiting the response of community seed production to fertility gradients. In combination, these findings can inform models of forest response that need to incorporate reproductive potential.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Tong Qiu, Robert Andrus, Marie-Claire Aravena, Davide Ascoli, Yves Bergeron, et al.. Limits to reproduction and seed size-number trade-offs that shape forest dominance and future recovery. Nature Communications, 2022, 13 (1), pp.2381. ⟨10.1038/s41467-022-30037-9⟩. ⟨hal-03665728⟩