Diversity Storage: Implications for tropical conservation and restoration

The future of tropical biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes will be conservation and restoration of processes of seed dispersal by birds and mammals. Here the Diversity Storage Hypothesis posits that immense biological diversity resides within skewed species-abundance distributions of tropical trees, and further predicts that many species will adjust to increases of 1.5–3.0 °C anticipated from climate change by 2100. Common and widespread tropical trees (>100,000,000 individuals) may shift ranges but are unlikely to face extinction. Many rare species (e.g.