Martin J. P. Sullivan

University of Leeds ·  Ecology and Global Change Group (EGC)

Tropical forests are global centres of biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these two functions depend critically on the tropical forest tree diversity-carbon storage relationship. Assessing th...

Forecasting impacts of future climate change is an important challenge to biologists, both for understanding the consequences of different emissions trajectories and for developing adaptation measures that will minimize biodiversity loss. Existing variation provides a window into the effects of climate on species and ecosystems, but in many places...

Anthropogenic modification of habitats may reduce the resources available for native species, leading to population declines and extinction. These same habitats often have the highest richness of non-native species. This pattern may be explained if recently human-modified habitats provide novel resources that are more accessible to non-native speci...

Martin J. P. Sullivan, Stuart E. Newson⇑ and James W. Pearce-HigginsBritish Trust for Ornithology, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PU, UKe-mail: stuart.newson{at}bto.orgAbstract A long-standing aim of ecologists is to understand the processes involved in regulating populations. One such mechanism is the buffer effect, where lower quality habit...

Thermophilization is the directional change in species community composition towards greater relative abundances of species associated with warmer environments. This process is well-documented in temperate and Neotropical plant communities, but it is uncertain whether this phenomenon occurs elsewhere in the tropics. Here we extend the search for th...

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 prese...

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we inve...

The tropical forest carbon sink is known to be drought sensitive, but it is unclear which forests are the most vulnerable to extreme events. Forests with hotter and drier baseline conditions may be protected by prior adaptation, or more vulnerable because they operate closer to physiological limits. Here we report that forests in drier South Americ...

Increasing attention is being paid to the carbon sequestration and storage services provided by coastal blue carbon ecosystems such as saltmarshes. Sites restored by managed realignment, where existing sea walls are breached to reinstate tidal inundation to the land behind, have considerable potential to accumulate carbon through deposition of sedi...

Spatial heterogeneity of species (beta diversity) is an important attribute of ecological communities, but is less frequently considered when assessing restoration success than other aspects of diversity (gamma and alpha). Differences in beta diversity between restored and natural sites may arise due to differences in environmental heterogeneity. W...

Estuarine and coastal waters are acknowledged centres for anthropogenic impacts. Superimposed on the complex natural interactions between land, rivers and sea are the myriad consequences of human activity – a spectrum ranging from locally polluting effluents to some of the severest consequences of global climate change. For practitioners, academics...

For monitoring and reporting forest carbon stocks and fluxes, many countries in the tropics and subtropics rely on default values of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories. Default IPCC forest AGB values originated from 2006, and are relativ...

Increasing attention is being paid to the carbon sequestration and storage services provided by coastal blue carbon ecosystems such as saltmarshes. Sites restored by managed realignment, where existing sea walls are breached to reinstate tidal inundation to the land behind, have considerable potential to accumulate carbon through deposition of sedi...

Significance The responses of tropical forests to heat and drought are critical uncertainties in predicting the future impacts of climate change. The 2015–2016 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) resulted in unprecedented heat and low precipitation across the tropics, including in the very poorly studied African tropical forest region. We assess Af...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20537-x

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality...

The sensitivity of tropical forest carbon to climate is a key uncertainty in predicting global climate change. Although short-term drying and warming are known to affect forests, it is unknown if such effects translate into long-term responses. Here, we analyze 590 permanent plots measured across the tropics to derive the equilibrium climate contro...

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest ‘carbon sink’ will continue for decades. Here we assess trends in the c...

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions1–3. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest ‘carbon sink’ will continue for decades4,5. Here we assess trends in...

Higher levels of taxonomic and evolutionary diversity are expected to maximize ecosystem function, yet their relative importance in driving variation in ecosystem function at large scales in diverse forests is unknown. Using 90 inventory plots across intact, lowland, terra firme, Amazonian forests and a new phylogeny including 526 angiosperm genera...

Strong El Niño events alter tropical climates and may lead to a negative carbon balance in tropical forests and consequently a disruption to the global carbon cycle. The complexity of tropical forests and the lack of data from these regions hamper the assessment of the spatial distribution of El Niño impacts on these ecosystems. Typically, maps of...

Afromontane forests, like those in the Aberdare National Park (ANP) in Kenya, sustain unique avifaunal assemblages. There is a growing need for biodiversity inventories for Afromontane forests, especially through the utilisation of unskilled observers. Acoustic surveys are a potential aid to this, but more comparisons of this technique with that of...

While the area of plantation forest increased globally between 2010 and 2015, more than twice the area of natural forests was lost over the same period (6.5 million ha natural forest lost per year versus 3.2 million ha plantation gained per year). Consequently, there is an increasing need to understand how plantation land use affects biodiversity....

As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of aboveground net biomass change (∆AGB) are needed. Countries with limited forest monitoring capabilities in the tropics and subtropics rely on IPCC 2006 default ∆AGB rates, which are values per ecological zone, per continent. Similarly, res...

African mountains vary considerably in their geological age and origin, size, spatial isolation and climate. These differences affect the floristic composition of Tropical Mountain Forests (TMFs) in Africa, which harbor high levels of endemism both at mountain resolution and across groups of mountains. TMFs are under threat from human activities, a...

Afromontane forests, like those in the Aberdare National Park (ANP) in Kenya, sustain unique avifaunal assemblages. There is a growing need for biodiversity inventories for Afromontane forests, especially through the utilisation of unskilled observers. Acoustic surveys are a potential aid to this, but more comparisons of this technique with that of...

Quantifying carbon dynamics in forests is critical for understanding their role in long-term climate regulation1–4. Yet little is known about tree longevity in tropical forests3,5–8, a factor that is vital for estimating carbon persistence3,4. Here we calculate mean carbon age (the period that carbon is fixed in trees7) in different strata of Afric...

Most of the planet's diversity is concentrated in the tropics, which includes many regions undergoing rapid climate change. Yet, while climate-induced biodiversity changes are widely documented elsewhere, few studies have addressed this issue for lowland tropical ecosystems. Here we investigate whether the floristic and functional composition of in...

Most of the planet's diversity is concentrated in the tropics, which includes many regions undergoing rapid climate change. Yet, while climate‐induced biodiversity changes are widely documented elsewhere, few studies have addressed this issue for lowland tropical ecosystems. Here we investigate whether the floristic and functional composition of in...

Aim Large tropical trees form the interface between ground and airborne observations, offering a unique opportunity to capture forest properties remotely and to investigate their variations on broad scales. However, despite rapid development of metrics to characterize the forest canopy from remotely sensed data, a gap remains between aerial and fie...

Aim: Large tropical trees form the interface between ground and airborne observations, offering a unique opportunity to capture forest properties remotely and to investigate their variations on broad scales. However, despite rapid development of metrics to characterize the forest canopy from remotely sensed data, a gap remains between aerial and fi...

The outstanding tropical land climate characteristic over the past decades is rapid warming, with no significant large-scale precipitation trends. This warming is expected to continue but the effects on tropical vegetation are unknown. El Niño-related heat peaks may provide a test bed for a future hotter world. Here we analyse tropical land carbon...

Appendix S1. Leaf energy balance methods. Appendix S2. Estimation of leaf boundary layer resistance from measured ΔT and rearrangement of the leaf energy balance equation. Table S1. Details of sample leaves including leaf traits Figure S1. Trend in temperature across the tropical forest biome. Statistically significant trends are shown with stip...

The distributions of many species are not at equilibrium with their environment. This includes spreading non-native species and species undergoing range shifts in response to climate change. The habitat associations of these species may change during range expansion as less favourable climatic conditions at expanding range margins may constrain spe...

Given anticipated climate changes, it is crucial to understand controls on leaf temperatures including variation between species in diverse ecosystems. In the first study of leaf energy balance in tropical montane forests, we observed current leaf temperature patterns on three tree species in the Atlantic forest, Brazil, over a 10‐day period, and a...

Saltmarshes can be created to compensate for lost habitat by a process known as managed realignment (MR), where sea defences are deliberately breached to flood low-lying agricultural land. However, the vegetation that develops on MR sites is not equivalent to natural habitat. In natural sites, surface topography and creek networks are drivers of ve...

The original version of this Article contained an error in the third sentence of the abstract and incorrectly read "Here, using long-term plot monitoring records of up to half a century, we find that intact forests in Borneo gained 0.43 Mg C ha-1 year-1 (95% CI 0.14-0.72, mean period 1988-2010) above-ground live biomass", rather than the correct "H...

Quantifying the relationship between tree diameter and height is a key component of efforts to estimate biomass and carbon stocks in tropical forests. Although substantial site‐to‐site variation in height–diameter allometries has been documented, the time consuming nature of measuring all tree heights in an inventory plot means that most studies do...

Less than half of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere. While carbon balance models imply large carbon uptake in tropical forests, direct on-the-ground observations are still lacking in Southeast Asia. Here, using long-term plot monitoring records of up to half a century, we find that intact forests in Borneo gained 0.43...

Table S1. Environmental characteristics in 1‐km radius buffers around UK butterfly monitoring scheme (UKBMS) and breeding bird survey (BBS) transects.

Table S2. Species investigated in this study, and importance of woody linear features at explaining and predicting their abundance.

Table S4. Effect of linear features variable type on abundance models for each species.

Table S3. R 2 and AIC of individual models for each species.

Fig. S1. Relationship between species abundance and woody linear features length for (a) birds and (b) butterflies.

Restored habitats, such as saltmarsh created through managed realignment, sometimes fail to meet targets for biological equivalence with natural reference sites. Understanding why this happens is important in order to improve restoration outcomes. Elevation in the tidal frame and sediment redox potential are major controls on the distribution of sa...

Modelling species distribution and abundance is important for many conservation applications, but it is typically performed using relatively coarse‐scale environmental variables such as the area of broad land‐cover types. Fine‐scale environmental data capturing the most biologically relevant variables have the potential to improve these models. For...

p>Tropical forests are global centres of biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these two functions depend critically on the tropical forest tree diversity-carbon storage relationship. Assessing...

Generalist species are becoming increasingly dominant in European bird communities. This has been taken as evidence of biotic homogenization, whereby generalist ‘winners’ systematically replace specialist ‘losers’. We test this pattern by relating changes in the average specialisation of UK bird communities to changes in the density of species with...

As the second largest cause of biodiversity loss worldwide, there is an urgent need to study the dynamics of biological invasions and identify factors limiting the distribution of invasive alien species. In the present study we analyze national-scale hunting bag data from Germany to predict the dispersal of raccoons in the largest non-native popula...

Tropical forests are global centres of both biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these two functions depend critically on the tropical forest diversity-carbon relationship and this remains larg...

Martin J. P. Sullivan, Stuart E. Newson⇑ and James W. Pearce-HigginsBritish Trust for Ornithology, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PU, UKe-mail: stuart.newson{at}bto.orgAbstract A long-standing aim of ecologists is to understand the processes involved in regulating populations. One such mechanism is the buffer effect, where lower quality habit...

http://www.bto.org/about-birds/birdtrends/2014

Not all non-native species have strong negative impacts on native species. It is desirable to assess whether a non-native species will have a negative impact at an early stage in the invasion process, when management options such as eradication are still available. Although it may be difficult to detect early impacts of non-native species, it is ne...

We investigated the impacts of the introduced Black-headed Weaver Ploceus melanocephalus in the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of its invasion. Black-headed Weavers have been suspected of competing with two ecologically similar native species, the Great Reed Warbler Acrocephalus arundinaceus and the Eurasian Reed Warbler A. scirpaceous (...

1. Non-native species can be major drivers of biodiversity loss and cause economic damage. Predicting the potential distribution of a non-native species, and understanding the environmental factors that limit this distribution, is useful for informing their potential management. This is often carried out using species distribution models (SDMs) tha...