Browsing by Autor "Hans ter Steege"

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Amazon tree dominance across forest strata
(Nature Portfolio, 2021) Frederick C. Draper; Flávia R. C. Costa; Gabriel Arellano; Oliver L. Phillips; Álvaro Duque; Manuel J. Macía; Hans ter Steege; Gregory P. Asner; Érika Berenguer; Juliana Schietti
Are compound leaves an adaptation to seasonal drought or to rapid growth? Evidence from the Amazon rain forest
(Wiley, 2010) Ana C. M. Malhado; Robert J. Whittaker; Yadvinder Malhi; Richard J. Ladle; Hans ter Steege; Oliver L. Phillips; Luiz E. O. C. Aragão; Timothy R. Baker; Luzmilla Arroyo; Samuel Almeida
ABSTRACT Aim To assess the hypotheses that compound leaves of trees in the Amazon forest are an adaptation to drought and/or rapid growth. Location Amazon rain forest, South America. Methods Genera from 137 permanent forest plots spread across Amazonia were classified into those with compound leaves and those with simple leaves. Metrics of compound leaf prevalence were then calculated for each plot and regression models that accounted for spatial autocorrelation were used to identify associations between climate variables and compound leaf structure. We also tested for associations between compound leaf structure and a variety of ecological variables related to life history and growth strategies, including wood density, annual increase in diameter and maximum height. Results One plant family, Fabaceae, accounts for 53% of compound‐leaved individuals in the dataset, and has a geographical distribution strongly centred on north‐east Amazonia. On exclusion of Fabaceae from the analysis we found no significant support for the seasonal drought hypothesis. However, we found evidence supporting the rapid growth hypothesis, with possession of compound leaves being associated with faster diameter growth rates and lower wood densities. Main conclusion This study provides evidence that possession of compound leaves constitutes one of a suite of traits and life‐history strategies that promote rapid growth in rain forest trees. Our findings highlight the importance of carefully considering the geographical distribution of dominant taxa and spatial clustering of data points when inferring ecological causation from environment–trait associations.
Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora
(Nature Portfolio, 2020) Hans ter Steege; Paulo Inácio Prado; Renato A. Ferreira de Lima; Edwin Pos; Luiz de Souza Coêlho; Diógenes de Andrade Lima Filho; Rafael P. Salomão; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos; Carolina V. Castilho
Centuries of compounding human influence on Amazonian forests
(National Academy of Sciences, 2025) Crystal N. H. McMichael; Mark B. Bush; Hans ter Steege; Dolores R. Piperno; William D. Gosling; Majoi N. Nascimento; Umberto Lombardo; Luiz de Souza Coêlho; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos
Recent evidence suggests that the ecological footprints of pre-Columbian Indigenous peoples in Amazonia persist in modern forests. Ecological impacts resulting from European colonization c. 1550 CE and the Amazonian Rubber Boom c. 1850 to 1920 CE are largely unexplored but could be important additive influences on forest structure and tree species composition. Using environmental niche models, we show the highest probabilities of pre-Columbian and colonial occupation sites, and hence human-induced ecological influences, occurred in forests along rivers. In many areas, the predicted pre-Columbian and colonial distributions overlap spatially with the potential for superimposed ecological influences. Environmental gradients are known to structure Amazonian vegetation composition, but they are also strong predictors of past human influence, both spatially and temporally. Our comparisons of model outputs with relative abundances of Amazonian tree species suggest that pre-Columbian and colonial-period ecological legacies are associated with modern forest composition.
Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities
(Nature Portfolio, 2024) Declan L. M. Cooper; Simon L. Lewis; Martin J. P. Sullivan; Paulo Inácio Prado; Hans ter Steege; Nicolas Barbier; Ferry Slik; Bonaventure Sonké; Corneille E. N. Ewango; Stephen Adu‐Bredu
Trees structure the Earth's most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1-6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth's 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world's most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees.
Dominance and rarity in tree communities across the globe: Patterns, predictors and threats
(Wiley, 2024) Iris Hordijk; Lalasia Bialic‐Murphy; T. Bruce Lauber; Devin Routh; Lourens Poorter; Malin Rivers; Hans ter Steege; Jingjing Liang; Peter B. Reich; Sergio de‐Miguel
Abstract Aim Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the following research questions: (1) What are the patterns of dominance and rarity in tree communities? (2) Which ecological and anthropogenic factors predict these patterns? And (3) what is the extinction risk of locally dominant and rare tree species? Location Global. Time period 1990–2017. Major taxa studied Trees. Methods We used 1.2 million forest plots and quantified local tree dominance as the relative plot basal area of the single most dominant species and local rarity as the percentage of species that contribute together to the least 10% of plot basal area. We mapped global community dominance and rarity using machine learning models and evaluated the ecological and anthropogenic predictors with linear models. Extinction risk, for example threatened status, of geographically widespread dominant and rare species was evaluated. Results Community dominance and rarity show contrasting latitudinal trends, with boreal forests having high levels of dominance and tropical forests having high levels of rarity. Increasing annual precipitation reduces community dominance, probably because precipitation is related to an increase in tree density and richness. Additionally, stand age is positively related to community dominance, due to stem diameter increase of the most dominant species. Surprisingly, we find that locally dominant and rare species, which are geographically widespread in our data, have an equally high rate of elevated extinction due to declining populations through large‐scale land degradation. Main conclusions By linking patterns and predictors of community dominance and rarity to extinction risk, our results suggest that also widespread species should be considered in large‐scale management and conservation practices.
Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2015) Hans ter Steege; Nigel C. A. Pitman; Timothy J. Killeen; Susan G. W. Laurance; Carlos A. Peres; Juan Ernesto Guevara; Rafael P. Salomão; Carolina V. Castilho; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos
Estimates of extinction risk for Amazonian plant and animal species are rare and not often incorporated into land-use policy and conservation planning. We overlay spatial distribution models with historical and projected deforestation to show that at least 36% and up to 57% of all Amazonian tree species are likely to qualify as globally threatened under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. If confirmed, these results would increase the number of threatened plant species on Earth by 22%. We show that the trends observed in Amazonia apply to trees throughout the tropics, and we predict that most of the world's >40,000 tropical tree species now qualify as globally threatened. A gap analysis suggests that existing Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories will protect viable populations of most threatened species if these areas suffer no further degradation, highlighting the key roles that protected areas, indigenous peoples, and improved governance can play in preventing large-scale extinctions in the tropics in this century.
Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness
(Wiley, 2023) Iris Hordijk; Daniel S. Maynard; Simon P. Hart; Lidong Mo; Hans ter Steege; Jingjing Liang; Sergio de‐Miguel; G.J. Nabuurs; Peter B. Reich; Meinrad Abegg
Abstract 1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a greater number of species may not always increase overall diversity and productivity of the system. Theoretical work and local empirical studies have shown that the effect of evenness on ecosystem functioning may be especially strong at high richness levels, yet the consistency of this remains untested at a global scale. 2. Here, we used a dataset of forests from across the globe, which includes composition, biomass accumulation and net primary productivity, to explore whether productivity correlates with community evenness and richness in a way that evenness appears to buffer the effect of richness. Specifically, we evaluated whether low levels of evenness in speciose communities correlate with the attenuation of the richness–productivity relationship. 3. We found that tree species richness and evenness are negatively correlated across forests globally, with highly speciose forests typically comprising a few dominant and many rare species. Furthermore, we found that the correlation between diversity and productivity changes with evenness: at low richness, uneven communities are more productive, while at high richness, even communities are more productive. 4. Synthesis . Collectively, these results demonstrate that evenness is an integral component of the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, and that the attenuating effect of richness on forest productivity might be partly explained by low evenness in speciose communities. Productivity generally increases with species richness, until reduced evenness limits the overall increases in community diversity. Our research suggests that evenness is a fundamental component of biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships, and is of critical importance for guiding conservation and sustainable ecosystem management decisions.
Floodplain forests drive fruit-eating fish diversity at the Amazon Basin-scale
(National Academy of Sciences, 2025) Sandra Bibiana Correa; Karold V. Coronado-Franco; Céline Jezequel; Amanda Cantarute Rodrigues; Kristine O. Evans; Joshua J. Granger; Hans ter Steege; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Luiz de Souza Coêlho; Florian Wittmann
Unlike most rivers globally, nearly all lowland Amazonian rivers have unregulated flow, supporting seasonally flooded floodplain forests. Floodplain forests harbor a unique tree species assemblage adapted to flooding and specialized fauna, including fruit-eating fish that migrate seasonally into floodplains, favoring expansive floodplain areas. Frugivorous fish are forest-dependent fauna critical to forest regeneration via seed dispersal and support commercial and artisanal fisheries. We implemented linear mixed effects models to investigate drivers of species richness among specialized frugivorous fishes across the ~6,000,000 km2 Amazon Basin, analyzing 29 species from 9 families (10,058 occurrences). Floodplain predictors per subbasin included floodplain forest extent, tree species richness (309,540 occurrences for 2,506 species), water biogeochemistry, flood duration, and elevation, with river order controlling for longitudinal positioning along the river network. We observed heterogeneous patterns of frugivorous fish species richness, which were positively correlated with floodplain forest extent, tree species richness, and flood duration. The natural hydrological regime facilitates fish access to flooded forests and controls fruit production. Thus, the ability of Amazonian floodplain ecosystems to support frugivorous fish assemblages hinges on extensive and diverse seasonally flooded forests. Given the low functional redundancy in fish seed dispersal networks, diverse frugivorous fish assemblages disperse and maintain diverse forests; vice versa, diverse forests maintain more fish species, underscoring the critically important taxonomic interdependencies that embody Amazonian ecosystems. Effective management strategies must acknowledge that access to diverse and hydrologically functional floodplain forests is essential to ensure the long-term survival of frugivorous fish and, in turn, the long-term sustainability of floodplain forests.
Functional composition of the Amazonian tree flora and forests
(Nature Portfolio, 2025) Hans ter Steege; Lourens Poorter; Jesús Aguirre‐Gutiérrez; Claire Fortunel; William E. Magnusson; Oliver L. Phillips; Edwin Pos; Bruno Garcia Luize; Christopher Baraloto; Juan Ernesto Guevara
Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities
(Wiley, 2024) Bruno Garcia Luize; D.E. Bauman; Hans ter Steege; Clarisse Palma‐Silva; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Luiz de Souza Coêlho; Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos; Diógenes de Andrade Lima Filho; Rafael P. Salomão; Florian Wittmann
Abstract Aim Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location Amazonia. Taxon Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega‐phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran's eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny. Results In the terra firme and várzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igapó and white‐sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured ( R 2 = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified ( R 2 = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types. Main Conclusion Numerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (>66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long‐standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions.
Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling
(Nature Portfolio, 2015) Sophie Fauset; Michelle Johnson; Manuel Gloor; Timothy R. Baker; Abel Monteagudo M.; Roel Brienen; Ted R. Feldpausch; Gabriela López‐González; Yadvinder Malhi; Hans ter Steege
Hyperdominance in the Amazonian Tree Flora
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2013) Hans ter Steege; Nigel C. A. Pitman; Daniel Sabatier; Christopher Baraloto; Rafael P. Salomão; Juan Ernesto Guevara; Oliver L. Phillips; Carolina V. Castilho; William E. Magnusson; Jean‐François Molino
The vast extent of the Amazon Basin has historically restricted the study of its tree communities to the local and regional scales. Here, we provide empirical data on the commonness, rarity, and richness of lowland tree species across the entire Amazon Basin and Guiana Shield (Amazonia), collected in 1170 tree plots in all major forest types. Extrapolations suggest that Amazonia harbors roughly 16,000 tree species, of which just 227 (1.4%) account for half of all trees. Most of these are habitat specialists and only dominant in one or two regions of the basin. We discuss some implications of the finding that a small group of species--less diverse than the North American tree flora--accounts for half of the world's most diverse tree community.
Mapping density, diversity and species-richness of the Amazon tree flora
(Nature Portfolio, 2023) Hans ter Steege; Nigel C. A. Pitman; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Luiz de Souza Coêlho; Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos; Diógenes de Andrade Lima Filho; Rafael P. Salomão; Florian Wittmann; Carolina V. Castilho; Juan Ernesto Guevara
Mapping landscape scale variations of forest structure, biomass, and productivity in Amazonia
(2009) Sassan Saatchi; Yadvinder Malhi; Brian R. Zutta; Wolfgang Buermann; Liana O. Anderson; Alejandro Araújo; Oliver L. Phillips; J. Peacock; Hans ter Steege; G. Lopez Gonzalez
Abstract. Landscape and environmental variables such as topography, geomorphology, soil types, and climate are important factors affecting forest composition, structure, productivity, and biomass. Here, we combine a network of forest inventories with recently developed global data products from satellite observations in modeling the potential distributions of forest structure and productivity in Amazonia and examine how geomorphology, soil, and precipitation control these distributions. We use the RAINFOR network of forest plots distributed in lowland forests across Amazonia, and satellite observations of tree cover, leaf area index, phenology, moisture, and topographical variations. A maximum entropy estimation (Maxent) model is employed to predict the spatial distribution of several key forest structure parameters: basal area, fraction of large trees, fraction of palms, wood density, productivity, and above-ground biomass at 5 km spatial resolution. A series of statistical tests at selected thresholds as well as across all thresholds and jackknife analysis are used to examine the accuracy of distribution maps and the relative contributions of environmental variables. The final maps were interpreted using soil, precipitation, and geomorphological features of Amazonia and it was found that the length of dry season played a key role in impacting the distribution of all forest variables except the wood density. Soil type had a significant impact on the wood productivity. Most high productivity forests were distributed either on less infertile soils of western Amazonia and Andean foothills, on crystalline shields, and younger alluvial deposits. Areas of low elevation and high density of small rivers of Central Amazonia showed distinct features, hosting mainly forests with low productivity and smaller trees.
Modeling the Ecological Responses of Tree Species to the Flood Pulse of the Amazon Negro River Floodplains
(Frontiers Media, 2021) John Ethan Householder; Jochen Schöngart; María Teresa Fernández Piedade; Wolfgang J. Junk; Hans ter Steege; Juan Carlos Montero; Rafael L. Assis; Daniel P. P. de Aguiar; Maihyra Marina Pombo; Adriano Costa Quaresma
The large flood pulse of the Amazon basin is a principal driver of environmental heterogeneity with important implications for ecosystem function and the assembly of natural communities. Understanding species ecological response to the flood pulse is thus a key question with implications for theories of species coexistence, resource management, and conservation. Yet these remain largely undescribed for most species, and in particular for trees. The large flood pulse and high tree diversity of the Negro River floodplain makes it an ideal system to begin filling this knowledge gap. We merged historical hydrologic data with 41 forest inventories under variable flooding conditions distributed across the Negro River basin, comprising a total area of 34 ha, to (i) assess the importance of flood duration as a driver of compositional variation, (ii) model the response curve shapes of 111 of the most frequent tree species in function of flood duration, and (iii) derive their niche properties (optima and tolerance). We found that flood duration is a strong driver of compositional turnover, although the majority site-to-site variation in forest composition still remains unexplained. About 73% of species responded to the flood duration gradient, exhibiting a diversity of shapes, but most frequently skewed. About 29% of species were clearly favored by flood durations &gt;120 days year –1 , and 44% of species favored by shorter floods. The median niche breadth was 85 flood days year –1 , corresponding to approximately 30% of the flood duration gradient. A significant subset of species (27%) did not respond to flooding, but rather exhibited wide tolerance to the flood gradient. The response models provided here offer valuable information regarding tree species differential capacity to grow, survive, and regenerate along an ecologically important gradient and are spatially valid for the Amazon Negro basin. These attributes make them an appealing tool with wide applicability for field and experimental studies in the region, as well as for vegetation monitoring and simulation models of floodplain forest change in the face of hydrologic alteration.
More than 10,000 pre-Columbian earthworks are still hidden throughout Amazonia
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2023) Vinícius Peripato; Carolina Levis; Guido A. Moreira; Dani Gamerman; Hans ter Steege; Nigel C. A. Pitman; Jonas Gregório de Souza; José Iriarte; Mark Robinson; André Braga Junqueira
Indigenous societies are known to have occupied the Amazon basin for more than 12,000 years, but the scale of their influence on Amazonian forests remains uncertain. We report the discovery, using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) information from across the basin, of 24 previously undetected pre-Columbian earthworks beneath the forest canopy. Modeled distribution and abundance of large-scale archaeological sites across Amazonia suggest that between 10,272 and 23,648 sites remain to be discovered and that most will be found in the southwest. We also identified 53 domesticated tree species significantly associated with earthwork occurrence probability, likely suggesting past management practices. Closed-canopy forests across Amazonia are likely to contain thousands of undiscovered archaeological sites around which pre-Columbian societies actively modified forests, a discovery that opens opportunities for better understanding the magnitude of ancient human influence on Amazonia and its current state.
Patterns and Determinants of Floristic Variation across Lowland Forests of Bolivia
(Wiley, 2010) Marisol Toledo; Lourens Poorter; Marielos Peña‐Claros; Alfredo Alarcón; Julio Balcázar; José Chuviña; Claudio Leaño; Juan Carlos Licona; Hans ter Steege; Frans Bongers
Floristic variation is high in the Neotropics, but little is known about the factors shaping this variation at the mesoscale. We examined floristic composition and its relationship with environmental factors across 220 1-ha permanent plots in tropical lowland Bolivia. For each plot, abundance of 100 species (93 tree and 7 palm species ≥10 cm diam) was obtained. Climatic data, related to rainfall seasonality and temperature, were interpolated from all available weather stations in the region, and soil properties, related to texture and fertility, were obtained for each plot. Floristic variation was strongly associated with differences in water availability and temperature, and therefore the climatic gradient shaped floristic variation more strongly than the edaphic gradient. Detrended correspondence analysis ordination divided lowland Bolivia primarily into two major groups (Southern Chiquitano region vs. the Amazon region) and a multiple response permutation procedure distinguished five floristic regions. Overall, the tested environmental variables differed significantly among the five regions. Using indicator species analysis, we distinguished 82 strong indicator species, which had significant environmental preferences for one floristic region. These species can be used as indicators of environmental conditions or to determine which floristic region a certain forest belongs. Given the predicted decreases in rainfall and increases in temperature for tropical lowland forests, our gradient approach suggests that species composition may shift drastically with climate change. Abstract in Spanish is available at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/btp.
Plant functional traits shape cultural and provisioning services to Indigenous communities in western Amazonia
(2023) Julia G. de Aledo; Hans ter Steege; Luis Cayuela; Laura Matas‐Granados; Celina Ben Saadi; Norma Salinas; María de los Ángeles La Torre-Cuadros; Selene Báez; Guillermo Bañares‐de‐Dios; Leslie Cayola
<title>Abstract</title> Functional traits have gained scientific support as a tool for understanding forests ecosystems and the goods and services they provide to human populations. Investigating how humans use and interact with plants based on their functional traits is crucial to support the long-term provision of plant-based ecosystem services. Here, we have adopted a large-scale approach encompassing nine different Indigenous communities across a latitudinal gradient of 1800 km in western Amazonia. We study the associations between nine different plant functional traits belonging to 1856 species and multiple cultural and provisioning services to support Indigenous communities in tropical ecosystems. We found that provisioning services, such as medicine, construction, and food, depend on multiple traits, and their selection is heterogeneous among communities. Cultural services, however, such as rituals, cosmetics, or recreational, hold more specific and tight relations with fewer traits. Their selection tends to be similar among communities, suggesting a possible functional selection convergence. Preserving traditional ecological knowledge is crucial for preserving biocultural well-being. Plant selection is not random, and functional traits can help us understand the current and past patterns of selection that have influenced the functional composition of Amazonian forests.
Plant functional traits shape cultural and provisioning services to Indigenous communities in western Amazonia
(2023) Hans ter Steege; Luis Cayuela; Laura Matas‐Granados; Celina Ben Saadi; Norma Salinas; María de los Ángeles La Torre-Cuadros; Selene Báez; Guillermo Bañares‐de‐Dios; Leslie Cayola; Belén Fadrique
<title>Abstract</title> Functional traits have gained scientific support as a tool for understanding forests ecosystems and the goods and services they provide to human populations. Investigating how humans use and interact with plants based on their functional traits is crucial to support the long-term provision of plant-based ecosystem services. Here, we have adopted a large-scale approach encompassing nine different Indigenous communities across a latitudinal gradient of 1800 km in western Amazonia. We study the associations between nine different plant functional traits belonging to 1856 species and multiple cultural and provisioning services to support Indigenous communities in tropical ecosystems. We found that provisioning services, such as medicine, construction, and food, depend on multiple traits, and their selection is heterogeneous among communities. Cultural services, however, such as rituals, cosmetics, or recreational, hold more specific and tight relations with fewer traits. Their selection tends to be similar among communities, suggesting a possible functional selection convergence. Preserving traditional ecological knowledge is crucial for preserving biocultural well-being. Plant selection is not random, and functional traits can help us understand the current and past patterns of selection that have influenced the functional composition of Amazonian forests.