The Arecaceae (palm) family is one of the most common and economically important plant groups in Amazonia, and play large roles in ecosystem functioning and carbon dynamics. The modern dominance of palms may be a result of environmental gradients, past climate variability and legacies of past human ...

Miconia is among the largest plant genera in the Neotropics and a taxonomically complex lineage. Indeed, molecular phylogenetic data shows that none of its traditionally accepted sections are monophyletic, preventing taxonomic advances within the genus. Miconia is the largest plant genus in the...

This review of Neotropical Burseraceae emphasizes developments since the last major review of the family in 2011. The Burseraceae comprise a Laurasian group (represented by Eocene fossils in the Northern Hemisphere) that originally dispersed through Central America into Amazonia. During cooling and ...

Soil water and nutrient availability are key drivers of tree species distribution and forest ecosystem functioning, with strong species differences in water and nutrient use. Despite growing evidence for intraspecific trait differences, it remains unclear under which circumstances the effects of...

The capacity of Amazon forests to sequester carbon is threatened by climate-change-induced shifts in precipitation patterns. However, the relative importance of plant physiology, ecosystem structure and trait composition responses in determining variation in gross primary productivity (GPP) remain...

While studying specimens of Garcinia gardneriana from the Brazilian Amazon we detected problems in reconciling the morphology of these collections to that of the type-collection (with the basionym of Rheedia gardneriana) and similar specimens from other regions of Brazil. An investigation led us to ...

Plant ecophysiological trade-offs between different strategies for tolerating stresses are widely theorized to shape forest functional diversity and vulnerability to climate change. However, trade-offs between hydraulic and stomatal regulation during natural droughts remain under-studied,...

Several centers of endemism have been proposed for Melastomataceae, particularly in Amazonia and Atlantic Forest. Despite the high degree of human-caused degradation in the last 500 years, the Atlantic Forest still presents some of the largest levels of diversity and endemism across all...

Amazonian droughts are increasing in frequency and severity. However, little is known about how this may influence species-specific vulnerability to drought across different ecosystem types.We measured 16 functional traits for 16 congeneric species from six families and eight genera restricted to...

The fate of tropical forests under future climate change is dependent on the capacity of their trees to adjust to drier conditions. The capacity of trees to withstand drought is likely to be determined by traits associated with their hydraulic systems. However, data on whether tropical trees can...