Woody species richness drives synergistic recovery of socio-ecological multifunctionality along early tropical dry forest regeneration

Social ecological dynamics of tropical secondary forests

“…Synergies between species richness, basal area, carbon stocks, and soil properties such as soil penetration along succession have been found (Ayala-Orozco et al, 2017;Siddique et al, 2021). In addition, the supply of ecosystem services such as the availability of useful species, microclimate regulation and contributions to climate change mitigation increased, as documented by three papers in this special issue (Cortés-Calderón et al, 2021;Naime et al, 2020;Siddique et al, 2021). These papers indicate clear synergies between several functions and services that are linked to increases in above ground biomass.…”

“…Ecological processes related to plant growth and carbon productivity can rapidly recover through natural regeneration in young forests of relatively high plant diversity, even lacking many of the old-growth forests specialists (see above). Synergies between species richness, basal area, carbon stocks, and soil properties such as soil penetration along succession have been found (Ayala-Orozco et al, 2017;Siddique et al, 2021). In addition, the supply of ecosystem services such as the availability of useful species, microclimate regulation and contributions to climate change mitigation increased, as documented by three papers in this special issue (Cortés-Calderón et al, 2021;Naime et al, 2020;Siddique et al, 2021).…”

“…Interdisciplinary place-based long-term approaches provide unique insights on the ecology and management of tropical secondary forests by small holders. Understanding the societal drivers and motivations associated to these forests (Tauro et al, 2018), the ways in which they are managed (Monroy-Sais et al, 2016;Sánchez-Romero et al, 2021), and the dynamics of their biodiversity (Gavito et al, 2021a;Marroquín-Páramo et al, 2021;Martínez-ramos et al, 2018;Pérez-Cárdenas et al, 2021) ecosystem functions and services (Cortés-Calderón et al, 2021;Gavito et al, 2021b;Siddique et al, 2021) requires the intertwining of a range of social and ecological disciplines. The long-term monitoring of secondary forest plots, with different management histories and landscape contexts, provides a wealth of information on these dynamics.…”

“…The authors conclude that litter decomposition rates in the dry forest are quite resilient to forest cover type, being forest age a poor predictor. On the other hand, Siddique et al (2021), tested an a priori model of causal relationships between multiple vegetation variables and three ecosystem variables (plant biomass, litter carbon stock, soil compaction), incorporating the main drivers reported in the literature to date. Their findings indicate that species richness and turnover, but not functional diversity, directly or indirectly affect the three ecosystem variables considered.…”

“…This opens the question on which traits should be used to capture the diversity of ways of living in species rich tropical communities. To our knowledge, still very few attempts have been done to test the links between biodiversity and ecosystem function during secondary succession in the tropics (Finegan et al, 2015;Lohbeck et al, 2015aLohbeck et al, , 2016Prado-Junior et al, 2016;van der Sande et al, 2017;Mora et al, 2018;Teixeira et al, 2020;Siddique et al, 2021), making it difficult to derive general patterns.…”