Functional diversity and redundancy of tropical forests shift with elevation and forest-use intensity

1. Change and intensification of forest use alter tropical ecosystems, influencing biodiversity and, subsequently, ecosystem functioning. The implications of eroding biodiversity may go beyond decreases in species diversity, resulting in changes of functional diversity, i.e. the diversity of ecological strategies present in the community, and functional redundancy, i.e. how redundant these strategies are to biodiversity loss. However, how environmental conditions and anthropogenic influences shape functional diversity and redundancy in tropical forests remains poorly understood.

2. Here, we examine how tropical forests respond to forest-use intensity along an extensive elevational gradient in Mexico from the tropical lowlands to high-elevational mountain forests (0 to 3500 m), in terms of functional diversity and functional redundancy, and how these biodiversity facets are related to forest structure. In our study, elevation was crossed with three levels of forest-use intensity: old-...