Global dominance of lianas over trees is driven by forest disturbance, climate and topography
Ngute, Alain Senghor K., Schoeman, David S., Pfeifer, Marion, Van Der Heijden, Geertje, Phillips, Oliver L., van Breugel, Michiel, Campbell, Mason J., Chandler, Chris J., Enquist, Brian J., Gallagher, Rachael V., Gehring, Christoph, Hall, Jefferson S., Laurance, Susan, Laurance, William F., Letcher, Susan G., Liu, Wenyao, Sullivan, Martin J.P., Wright, S. Joseph, Yuan, Chunming, and Marshall, Andrew R. (2024) Global dominance of lianas over trees is driven by forest disturbance, climate and topography. Global Change Biology, 30 (1). e17140.
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Abstract
Growing evidence suggests that liana competition with trees is threatening the global carbon sink by slowing the recovery of forests following disturbance. A recent theory based on local and regional evidence further proposes that the competitive success of lianas over trees is driven by interactions between forest disturbance and climate. We present the first global assessment of liana–tree relative performance in response to forest disturbance and climate drivers. Using an unprecedented dataset, we analysed 651 vegetation samples representing 26,538 lianas and 82,802 trees from 556 unique locations worldwide, derived from 83 publications. Results show that lianas perform better relative to trees (increasing liana-to-tree ratio) when forests are disturbed, under warmer temperatures and lower precipitation and towards the tropical lowlands. We also found that lianas can be a critical factor hindering forest recovery in disturbed forests experiencing liana-favourable climates, as chronosequence data show that high competitive success of lianas over trees can persist for decades following disturbances, especially when the annual mean temperature exceeds 27.8°C, precipitation is less than 1614 mm and climatic water deficit is more than 829 mm. These findings reveal that degraded tropical forests with environmental conditions favouring lianas are disproportionately more vulnerable to liana dominance and thus can potentially stall succession, with important implications for the global carbon sink, and hence should be the highest priority to consider for restoration management.
| Item ID: | 82054 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1365-2486 |
| Keywords: | carbon, climbers, competition, ecosystem function, forest succession, liana–tree interaction, plant–climate interaction, plant–plant interaction, restoration, vines |
| Copyright Information: | This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2024 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. |
| Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC) |
| Projects and Grants: | ARC FT170100279 |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Mar 2025 01:10 |
| FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310308 Terrestrial ecology @ 50% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4101 Climate change impacts and adaptation > 410102 Ecological impacts of climate change and ecological adaptation @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180601 Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems @ 70% 19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1901 Adaptation to climate change > 190102 Ecosystem adaptation to climate change @ 30% |
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