Latitudinal scaling of aggregation with abundance and coexistence in forests

作者：Thorsten Wiegand, Xugao Wang, Xugao Wang, Samuel Fischer, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Norman A. Bourg, Warren Y. Brockelman, Guanghong Cao, Min Cao, Wirong Chanthorn, Chengjin Chu, Stuart J. Davies, Sisira Ediriweera, C. V. S. Gunatilleke, I. A. U. N. Gunatilleke, Zhanqing Hao, Robert W. Howe, Mingxi Jiang, Guangze Jin, W. John Kress, Buhang Li, Juyu Lian, Luxiang Lin, Feng Liu, Keping Ma, William J. McShea, Xiangcheng Mi, Jonathan A. Myers, Anuttara Nathalang, David A. Orwig, Guochun Shen, Sheng‐Hsin Su, I‐Fang Sun, Xihua Wang, Xihua Wang, Amy Wolf, En‐Rong Yan, Wanhui Ye, Yan Zhu, Andreas Huth · 发表于：Nature · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1038/s41586-025-08604-z · 被引用次数：28 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies、Ecosystem dynamics and resilience

The search for simple principles that underlie the spatial structure and dynamics of plant communities is a long-standing challenge in ecology1–6. In particular, the relationship between species coexistence and the spatial distribution of plants is challenging to resolve in species-rich communities7–9. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of the spatial patterns of 720 tree species in 21 large forest plots and their consequences for species coexistence. We show that species with low abundance tend to be more spatially aggregated than more abundant species. Moreover, there is a latitudinal gradient in the strength of this negative aggregation–abundance relationship that increases from tropical to temperate forests. We suggest, in line with recent work10, that latitudinal gradients in animal seed dispersal11 and mycorrhizal associations12–14 may jointly generate this pattern. By integrating the observed spatial patterns into population models8, we derive the conditions under which species can invade from low abundance in terms of spatial patterns, demography, niche overlap and immigration. Evaluation of the spatial-invasion condition for the 720 tree species analysed suggests that temperate and tropical forests both meet the invasion criterion to a similar extent but through contrasting strategies conditioned by their spatial patterns. Our approach opens up new avenues for the integration of observed spatial patterns into ecological theory and underscores the need to unders...