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Intraspecific variation in tropical trees can drive resistance to drought

Nature作者：Brendan Choat2026年8月12日正文已收录本站
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Different tropical tree species can vary in their ability to withstand drought — and so too, it seems, can distinct populations of the same tree species.

By

  1. Brendan Choat

    1. Brendan Choat is at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Richmond, New South Wales 2753, Australia.

  2. Erick Calderón-Morales

    1. Erick Calderón-Morales is at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Richmond, New South Wales 2753, Australia.

Tropical forests are becoming threatened by increasingly severe stress from droughts as the climate warms. Writing in Nature, however, Smith-Martin et al.1 show that many tropical tree species adjust key drought-resistance traits along rainfall gradients — revealing an unexpected degree of hydraulic flexibility that might help forests to persist in a drier future.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02292-z

References

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Download references

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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