Phylogenetic conservatism in the relationship between functional and demographic characteristics in Amazon tree taxa

Leaf and wood functional traits of trees are related to growth,
reproduction, and survival, but the degree of phylogenetic conservatism in
these relationships is largely unknown. In this study, we describe the
variability of strategies involving leaf, wood and demographic
characteristics for tree genera distributed across the Amazon Region, and
quantify phylogenetic signal for the characteristics and their
relationships. Leaf and wood traits are aligned with demographic variables
along two main axes of variation. The first axis represents the
coordination of leaf traits describing resource uptake and use, wood
density, seed mass and survival. The second axis represents the
coordination between size and growth. Both axes show strong phylogenetic
signal, suggesting a constrained evolution influenced by ancestral values,
yet the second axis also has an additional, substantial portion of its
variation that is driven by functional correlations unrelated to
phylogeny, suggesting simultaneously higher evolutionary lability and
coordination. Synthesis. Our results suggest that life-history strategies
of tropical trees are generally phylogenetically conserved, but that tree
lineages may have some capability of responding to environmental changes
by modulating their growth and size. Overall, we provide the largest-scale
synopsis of functional characteristics of Amazonian trees, showing
substantial nuance in the evolutionary patterns of individual
characteristics and their relationships.

Genus-level data on Amazon trees functional traits and
demographic characteristics (see methods in the manuscript).

# Phylogenetic conservatism in the relationship between functional and
demographic characteristics in Amazon tree taxa
[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkmb1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkmb1) ## Description of the data and file structure This repository contains the data and R scripts used in the paper titled: "Phylogenetic conservatism in the relationship between functional and demographic characteristics in Amazon tree taxa", published by Pablo Sanchez-Martinez et al. in the journal Functional Ecology in 2024. The repository contains: * Dataset. Genus level data of Amazonian tree genus functional traits and demographic characteristics. Cells with no available data are coded as "NA". * Phylogeny. Phylogeny used in the analyses, obtained and pruned from (Neves et al. 2020). * R project. Includes the scripts used to analyze the data and the general fonder structure needed to save results and outputs. Analyses are mainly implemented by the TrEvol R package (Sanchez-Martinez et al. 2024). For any extra information on the method or data please refer to the manuscript materials and methods or contact first author ([[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])). ## Literature cited Neves, D.M., Dexter, K.G., Baker, T.R., Coelho de Souza, F., Oliveira-Filho, A.T., Queiroz, L.P., *et al.* (2020). Evolutionary diversity in tropical tree communities peaks at intermediate precipitation. *Sci. Rep.*, 10, 1–8. Sanchez‐Martinez, P., Ackerly, D.D., Martínez‐Vilalta, J., Mencuccini, M., Dexter, K.G. & Dawson, T.E. (2024). A framework to study and predict functional trait syndromes using phylogenetic and environmental data. *Methods Ecol. Evol.*, 2024, 1–16. ### Files and variables #### File: Sanchez\_Martinez\_etal-2024\_FE\_dataset.xlsx | variable\_abbreviation | variable\_full\_name | | :--------------------- | :---------------------------------------------------- | | genus | Tree genus (taxonomy) | | family | Tree family (taxonomy) | | order | Tree order (taxonomy) | | group | Tree group (taxonomy) | | group\_2 | Tree group (taxonomy) | | WD | Wood density (g cm-3) | | SLA | Specific leaf area (m2 kg-1) | | N | Leaf nitrogen content (g m-2) | | P | Phosphorous nitrogen content (g m-2) | | C | Carbon  nitrogen content (g m-2) | | Max.D | Maximum diameter (cm) | | Max.growth | Maximum growth rate (cm yr-1) | | Mean.growth | Mean growth rate (cm yr-1) | | Mort | Mortality rate ((% of trees >10 cm DBH dying year-1) | | SMC | Seed mass (g) | | PC1 | Integrative first principal component | | PC2 | Integrative second principal component | | PC3 | Integrative third principal component | | fun\_PC1 | Functional first principal component | | fun\_PC2 | Functional  second principal component | | fun\_PC3 | Functional  third principal component | | life\_PC1 | Demographic (life-history) first principal component | | life\_PC2 | Demographic (life-history) second principal component | | life\_PC3 | Demographic (life-history) third principal component | Note: Cells with no available data are coded as "NA". #### File: atdn\_phylogeny\_genus\_lvl\_2021.tre **Description:** Genus-level phylogeny of tropical tree taxa used in the analyses.