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Southern hemisphere botanical ecosystems
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 72(2)

Traits vary differently across a lowland forest–sand dune gradient in two common trees of the Amazon restinga coast

Luane G. B. Rebelo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9928-6007 A * , Mateus C. Silva https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4281-3400 B , Handria J. A. da Silva https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5484-5848 C , Ely Simone C. Gurgel https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9488-7532 C , Beatriz V. Barbosa https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0256-4945 A and Grazielle S. Teodoro https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5528-8828 A *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Pará, Brazil.

B Department of Geography, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.

C Coordenação de Botânica, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, Pará, Brazil.

* Correspondence to: gsales.bio@gmail.com, luanebotelho05@gmail.com

Handling Editor: Rachael Nolan

Australian Journal of Botany 72, BT23044 https://doi.org/10.1071/BT23044
Submitted: 9 June 2023  Accepted: 17 February 2024  Published: 14 March 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

Intraspecific trait variation is a key feature that enables species to occur in heterogeneous landscapes. We studied Clusia grandiflora and Anacardium occidentale traits over a forest–dune gradient on the Brazilian Amazon coast (restinga). C. grandiflora showed a drought-avoidance strategy, storing water in its leaves, whereas A. occidentale showed conservative resource use in leaves, evidenced by its high dry-matter content and acquisitive resource in wood, showing lower wood density. Only A. occidentale changed its trait values through the forest–dune gradient, showing more conservative leaves in dunes and shrublands, despite a lower wood density than in forest. Leaf and wood traits are likely to be decoupled among Amazon coastal trees and their responses to environmental gradients are species-specific.

Keywords: ecological strategies, environmental gradients, functional traits, intraspecific variation, leaf traits, plasticity, restinga, wood traits.

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