Ecologists uncover ’hyperdominant’ tree species in the Amazon

Academics from the University of Leeds have joined researchers from around the world to generate the first basin-wide estimates of the abundance and distribution of trees in the Amazon rainforest. The research which spans nine countries, belong to only a tiny fraction of the different species found there. The findings could aid conservation efforts and climate change research the future. Professor Oliver Phillips, Royal Society Wolfson Researcher in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds and study co-author, said: “For the first time, plant ecologists have managed to work out which species dominate Greater Amazonia. This has required a huge collaborative effort, with more than 100 researchers working in each one of the nine nations of Amazonia. Historically, the vast extent and difficult terrain of Greater Amazonia – which includes the Amazon Basin (spanning Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Columbia, and Venezuela) and Guiana Shield (Guiana, Suriname, and French Guiana) – had restricted the study of its extraordinarily diverse tree communities to local and regional scales. “In essence, this means that the largest pool of tropical carbon on Earth has been a black box for ecologists, and conservationists don't know which Amazonian tree species face the most severe threats of extinction,” said Dr Nigel Pitman, who is the Robert O. Bass Visiting Scientist at The Field Museum in Chicago and a co-author of the study. However, in the new study, researchers combined data from 1,170 forestry surveys to finally answer two long-standing questions: How many trees are there in Greater Amazonia, and how many tree species occur there?