
@article {5216,
	title = {Contrasting effects of defaunation on aboveground carbon storage across the global tropics.},
	journal = {Nat Commun},
	volume = {7},
	year = {2016},
	month = {2016},
	pages = {11351},
	abstract = {<p>Defaunation is causing declines of large-seeded animal-dispersed trees in tropical forests worldwide, but whether and how these declines will affect carbon storage across this biome is unclear. Here we show, using a pan-tropical data set, that simulated declines of large-seeded animal-dispersed trees have contrasting effects on aboveground carbon stocks across Earth{\textquoteright}s tropical forests. In our simulations, African, American and South Asian forests, which have high proportions of animal-dispersed species, consistently show carbon losses (2-12\%), but Southeast Asian and Australian forests, where there are more abiotically dispersed species, show little to no carbon losses or marginal gains ({\textpm}1\%). These patterns result primarily from changes in wood volume, and are underlain by consistent relationships in our empirical data (\~{}2,100 species), wherein, large-seeded animal-dispersed species are larger as adults than small-seeded animal-dispersed species, but are smaller than abiotically dispersed species. Thus, floristic differences and distinct dispersal mode-seed size-adult size combinations can drive contrasting regional responses to defaunation.</p>
},
	issn = {2041-1723},
	doi = {10.1038/ncomms11351},
	author = {Osuri, Anand M and Ratnam, Jayashree and Varma, Varun and Alvarez-Loayza, Patricia and Hurtado Astaiza, Johanna and Bradford, Matt and Fletcher, Christine and Ndoundou-Hockemba, Mireille and Jansen, Patrick A and Kenfack, David and Marshall, Andrew R and Ramesh, B R and Rovero, Francesco and Sankaran, Mahesh}
}
