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Intraspecific variation in tropical trees can drive resistance to drought
Brendan Choat is at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Richmond, New South Wales 2753, Australia.
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Erick Calderón-Morales is at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Richmond, New South Wales 2753, Australia.
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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.
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Smith-Martin, C. M., Muscarella, R., Brodribb, T. J. & Uriarte, M. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10870-4 (2026).
Chambers, J. Q. et al. Nature 649, 1190–1196 (2026).