Primary productivity is related to niche width in the Australian Wet Tropics

Aim: A key ecological debate is whether ecosystem functions are distinctly influenced by biological diversity across broad scales. Although recent work has emphasized the importance of links between ecosystem functions and measures of ecological specialization as proxies of biodiversity, few studies have analysed macroecological relationships empirically in diverse environments. We tested whether gross primary productivity (GPP) in the Australian Wet Tropics (WT) was distinctly related to community‐level measures of the ecological specialization of component tree species across climate space, after accounting for climate drivers.

Location: Wet Tropics, Australia.

Time period: 1976–2012.

Major taxa studied: Nine hundred and forty‐eight WT tree species.

Methods: Using all geographically valid herbarium records for WT trees, we quantified the realized climatic niche widths using continental surfaces for maximum temperature of the warmest period and total annual rainfall. The me...