Functional assembly of tropical montane tree islands in the Atlantic Forest is shaped by stress-tolerance, bamboo-presence and facilitation

Aims: Amidst the Campos de Altitude (Highland Grasslands) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, woody communities grow either clustered in tree islands or interspersed within the herbaceous matrix. The functional ecology, diversity and biotic processes shaping these plant communities are largely unstudied. We characterised the functional assembly and diversity of these tropical montane woody communities and investigated how they fit within Grime’s CSR (C – competitor, S – stress-tolerant, R – ruderal) scheme, what functional trade-offs they exhibit and how traits and functional diversity vary in response to bamboo presence/absence.

Methods: To characterize the functional composition of the community, we sampled five leaf traits and wood density along transects covering the woody communities both inside tree islands and outside (i.e. isolated woody plants in the grasslands community) . Then, we used Mann Whitney test, t-test and variation partitioning to determine the effects of inside vs...