Are Commonly Measured Functional Traits Involved in Tropical Tree Responses to Climate?

Table 2

Functional traits mediate tropical tree responses to climate variations among 53 neotropical species. Shown are percentages of tree growth variance explained by the interaction of traits and climate factors in univariate analysis. Only significant interactions are shown based on the difference between BIC values of the model and BIC_ref. ***denote a difference >10, ** >2 and *between 0 and 2. (+) trees with high values of a given functional trait grew significantly faster when a given climate variable was high. (−) trees with high values of a given functional trait grew significantly slower when a given climate variable was high.

	DBH	Heightmax	WdDens	N	CN	LTD	Chlo	Tough
REW^a						0.19*** (+)	0.12** (+)
Rain	0.24*** (+)					0.34*** (+)	0.13** (+)
SWD^b	0.38*** (−)	0.11** (−)	0.08** (+)	0.15** (−)	0.13** (+)	0.08* (−)		0.15** (+)
Irradiance	0.12** (−)		0.11** (+)	0.08* (−)				0.12** (+)
Tmax				0.08* (−)
Tmin				0.08* (−)
Wind.speed				0.09* (−)		0.09* (+)	0.08* (+)
VPD^c	0.08* (−)			0.09* (−)	0.08* (+)

aRelative extractable water, ^bsoil water deficit (1-REW), and ^cvapour pressure deficit.