Sebastián González-Caro- PhD Ecology
- Lecturer at University of Antioquia
Sebastián González-Caro
- PhD Ecology
- Lecturer at University of Antioquia
About
66
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 2021 - present
Publications
Publications (66)
In tropical montane forests, the Earth’s largest biodiversity hotspots, there is increasing evidence that climate warming is resulting in montane species being displaced by their lowland counterparts. However, the drivers of these changes are poorly understood. Across a large elevation gradient in the Colombian Andes, we established three experimen...
The tropical Andes, the highest global biodiversity hotspot, is highly threatened by habitat loss and intense land use. Forest loss rates have remained persistent throughout the region during this century, resulting in a spread fragmented landscape composed of small forest fragments. However, the spatial distribution and magnitude of the proximate...
The relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors in shaping forest biomass stocks and fluxes remains a controversial issue. Here, using data gathered from 39 1 ha plots located in flooded and terra firme mature tropical lowland forests of the Amazon and Orinoquia regions of Colombia, we evaluated the importance of climate, soil fertility, and...
Tropical montane forests (TMFs) are biodiversity hotspots and provide vital ecosystem services, but they are disproportionately vulnerable to climate warming. In the Andes, cold‐affiliated species from high elevations are being displaced at the hot end of their thermal distributions by warm‐affiliated species migrating upwards from lower elevations...
Patterns of species diversity have been associated with changes in climate across latitude and elevation. However, the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying these relationships are still actively debated. Here, we present a complementary view of the well-known tropical niche conservatism (TNC) hypothesis, termed the multiple zones of or...
Climate warming is causing compositional changes in Andean tropical montane forests (TMFs). These shifts are hypothesised to result from differential responses to warming of cold‐ and warm‐affiliated species, with the former experiencing mortality and the latter migrating upslope. The thermal acclimation potential of Andean TMFs remains unknown.
Al...
The occurrence of annual growth rings in tropical trees—the result of the seasonal activity of vascular cambium—has been explained by seasonal water deficit or flooding periods. However, little is known about the drivers of annual tree‐ring formation under tropical hyper‐humid conditions without clear seasonal dry periods or flooding (ever‐wet cond...
Key message
Isotope variation (δ¹⁸O) in wood suggests new insights on growth rhythms in trees growing in tropical forest with extremely high precipitation, without seasonal droughts or flooding.
Abstract
It is well known that growth-limiting factors such as seasonal droughts can induce periodicities in woody tissue formation of tropical trees. In...
Aims
Tropical dry forests are one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, and understanding the effects of climate on its species distributions is critical to mitigate global change impacts. Here, we assessed the impact of precipitation and dispersal limitation by natural and anthropogenic causes on phylogenetic and taxonomic beta diversity of...
Recent studies have demonstrated that ecological processes that shape community structure and dynamics change along environmental gradients. However, much less is known about how the emergence of the gradients themselves shape the evolution of species that underlie community assembly. In this study, we address how the creation of novel environments...
It is largely unknown how South America's Andean forests affect the global carbon cycle, and thus regulate climate change. Here, we measure aboveground carbon dynamics over the past two decades in 119 monitoring plots spanning a range of >3000 m elevation across the subtropical and tropical Andes. Our results show that Andean forests act as strong...
Biogeographic events occurring in the deep past can contribute to the structure of modern ecological communities. However, little is known about how the emergence of environmental gradients shape the evolution of species that underlie community assembly. In this study, we address how the creation of novel environments lead to community assembly via...
The extent to which historical dispersal, environmental features and geographical barriers shape the phylogenetic structure and turnover of tree communities in northwestern Amazonia at multiple spatial scales remains poorly understood.
We used 85 floristically standardized 0.1‐ha plots (DBH ≥ 2.5 cm) distributed in three subregions of northwestern...
The biogeographic origin of species may help to explain differences in average tree height and aboveground biomass (AGB) of tropical mountain forests. After the Andean uplift, small‐statured trees should have been among the initial colonizers of the highlands (new cold environment) from the lowland tropics, since these species are pre‐adapted to co...
Background
Species turnover (β-diversity) along elevational gradients is one of the most important concepts in plant ecology. However, there is a lack of consensus about the main driving mechanisms of tree β-diversity at local scales in very diverse ecosystems (e.g., Andean mountains), as well as how the sampling effect can alter β-diversity estima...
In a recent paper, Brancalion et al. (2019) used information on the benects and feasibility
of restoration to identify global hotspots in tropical rainforests (1). They suggest that
these hotspots should be priority areas to guide regional and local restoration programs.
We believe that Brancalion et al.’s analyses are valuable, but lament their de...
We test for evidence of the Tropical Niche Conservatism or the Out of The Tropics hypotheses in structuring patterns of tree community composition along a 2000 + meter elevational gradient in the northern tropical Andes. By collecting and integrating data on the presence–absence of tree species within plots with phylogenetic information, we analyze...
El municipio de Envigado se encuentra ubicado en el Valle de Aburrá; una región de gran diversidad por su composición fisiográfica y por sus condiciones climáticas, que abarca lugares desde los 1500 hasta los 2900 metros de altitud. El 35% de Envigado aún tiene cobertura boscosa con diferentes grados de conservación, esto equivale a alrededor de 2....
La degradación de los bosques puede reflejarse en el grado de fragmentación entre los remanentes existentes.
After more than 50-years of armed conflict, Colombia is now transitioning to a more stable social and political climate due to a series of peace agreements between the government and different armed groups. Consequences of these socio-economic and political changes on ecosystems are largely uncertain, but there is growing concern about derived incr...
Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth and is currently entering an era of tremendous societal and economic transformations. Formerly inaccessible conflict areas will face development, agricultural expansion, and intrusion of extractive industries threatening Colombia’s ecosystems and biodiversity. This constitutes a great challe...
We evaluate the role of differences in substrate age and environmental conditions, as represented by different geological units, in determining the phylogenetic structure and distribution of tree communities in the northwest Amazon. We used 412 0.1-ha plots distributed across the three main geological units (craton, tertiary and alluvial) in the Co...
Understanding and predicting the likely response of ecosystems to climate change are crucial challenges for ecology and for conservation biology. Nowhere is this challenge greater than in the tropics as these forests store more than half the total atmospheric carbon stock in their biomass. Biomass is determined by the balance between biomass inputs...
Biomass data used in the study.
(XLSX)
Relationship between measured biomass with the Chave et al. (2005) and Alvarez et al. (2012) models, for 156 plots of Colombia.
The lines represent the adjusted generalized linear model: ln (AGB B1) = a + b * ln (AGB B2) + C. Where B1 = measured biomass in this study with Alvarez et al. (2012), B2 = measured biomass with the Chave et al. (2005), an...
Relations between the biomass predicted by the pantropical maps of Baccini et al. (2012) and Saatchi et al. (2011), and the biomass measured in this study.
The black solid line represents the adjusted linear model and the red dotted line the 1: 1 ratio between both values. For this analysis, we only use the 156 Colombian plots for which we have the...
Ecological niche modeling of Triatominae bugs allow us to establish the local risk of transmission of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas disease. This information could help to guide health authority recommendations on infection monitoring, prevention, and control. In this study, we estimated the geographic distribution of triatomi...
A pesar de que hasta hace una década los bosques protectores del embalse La Fe estaban catalogados
como áreas de conservación, los consiguientes procesos de urbanización, deforestación y minería que
han tenido lugar en las zonas aledañas han llegado a poner en riesgo la provisión de agua para Medellín.
To understand the driving factors behind the specificity amongst plant visitors and potential pollinators, we identified Mystrops spp. from eight palm species representative of each of the major clades of Wettinia (Arecaceae). We collected 31 palm inflorescences of at least three individuals per species from three different regions of across the di...
Frugivory is a widespread mutualistic interaction in which frugivores obtain nutritional resources while favoring plant recruitment through their seed dispersal services. Nonetheless, how these complex interactions are organized in diverse communities, such as tropical forests, is not fully understood. In this study we evaluated the existence of pl...
Agradecimientos: Este trabajo es parte del proyecto " Dinámica del bosques Tropical " , cofinanciado por Colciencias-JBMED (contrato 393 de 2012). Conservation planning is a fundamental tool to define protected areas. We included Alfa and beta biodiversity parameters in a systematic way, using palms as a model group for conservation planning in the...
Abstract Many organisms exhibit distinct breeding seasons tracking food availability. If conspecific populations inhabit areas that experience different temporal cycles in food availability spurred by variation in precipitation regimes, then they should display asynchronous breeding seasons. Thus, such populations might exhibit a temporal barrier t...
Aims Environmental gradients are drivers of species diversity; however, we know relatively little about the evolutionary processes
underlying these relationships. A potentially powerful approach to studying diversity gradients is to quantify the phylogenetic
structure within and between assemblages arrayed along broad spatial and environmental grad...
Aims
Environmental gradients are drivers of species diversity; however, we know relatively little about the evolutionary processes underlying these relationships. A potentially powerful approach to studying diversity gradients is to quantify the phylogenetic structure within and between assemblages arrayed along broad spatial and environmental grad...
Ateline monkeys are efficient seed dispersers that affect diversity and regeneration patterns
in Neotropical forests. However, the majority of ateline species face extinction risks due to
their susceptibility to deforestation and hunting. In order to generate effective conservation
plans we still need more information on their geographic distributi...
RODRIGUEZ-BOLAÑOS, A; GONZALES –CARO SEBASTIAN; ETTER ANDRES Y STEVENSON PABLO. 2013. Predictive models of the geographic distribution of Ateline monkeys (Lagothrix y Ateles) in Colombia. En: Primates Colombianos en Peligro de Extincion. 2013. DEFLER T,R; STEVENSON P R; BUENO M L Y GUZMAN CARO D C (Eds). Asociacion Primatológica Colombiana. Isbn. 9...
La estacionalidad en las fluctuaciones del nivel del agua en las planicies de inundación generan cambios dramáticos en Ias comunidades de plantas que se ven sometidas a altos niveles de estrés y en consecuencia existe una gran variedad de bosques inundables asociados a los ríos tropicales. En Colombia se encuentran distribuidos ampliamente en Chocó...
Evidencias recientes indican que la biomasa del árbol más grande puede explicar significativamente la variación en la biomasa del bosque a lo largo de gradientes climáticos. Este resultado es importante ya que de poder extrapolarse a diferentes bosques tropicales permitiría hacer mediciones de carbono en campo de una forma rápida y económica. En es...
Fabaceae ha sido reportada frecuentemente como la familia dominante en número de especies y abundancia en los bosques Neotropicales. En este trabajo evaluamos la contribución de Fabaceae a la diversidad y almacenamiento de carbono del bosque en una muestra de 60 inventarios florísticos distribuidos en Colombia, de la base de datos del JBMED. Primer...
Patterns of phylogenetic structure of assemblages are increasingly used to gain insight into the ecological and evolutionary processes involved in the assembly of co-occurring species. Metrics of phylogenetic structure can be sensitive to scaling issues and data availability. Here we empirically assess the sensitivity of four metrics of phylogeneti...
GenBank accession numbers for all sequences of species used to estimate the overall phylogeny (ALL, 170 species) that included the 74 species present in the assemblages (ASS). Sequences with no data are labeled as ‘no seqs’ and sequences still pending accession numbers as ‘pending’.
(DOCX)
Distribution of major hummingbird clades along the elevational gradient based on field inventories and museum records in this study.
(TIF)
Proportion of assemblages with significant patterns of phylogenetic structure at different spatial grains and based on different sources of data. Dark gray indicates coarse-grained assemblages and light gray indicates fine-grained assemblages. Differences between combinations based on Chi-square tests are indicated (* = P<0.05, ** = P<0.01, *** = P...
List of references for field inventories.
(DOC)
Relationship between species richness and elevation for all combinations of spatial grains and sources of data.
(TIF)
Estimated slope values and their respective 95% confidence intervals from the relationship between phylogenetic structure and elevation for each phylogenetic structure index (NRI, NTI, PSV, PSC) under each unique combination of species pool, spatial grain and data source.
(DOC)
Percentage of assemblages with significant patterns of phylogenetic structure (even or clustered) for each combination of spatial grain, data source and species pool.
(DOC)
Results of the ANCOVA analyses using the same number of samples per spatial grain. Significant P-values are highlighted in bold.
(DOC)
Results of Tukey post-hoc comparisons of ANCOVA analyses among sources of data and spatial grains (t-value (P-value)). Significant P-values are highlighted in bold (RM = Range maps, FI = Field inventories, MR = Museum records, CO = Coarse-grained assemblages, FN = Fine-grained assemblages).
(DOC)
