Significance: People are fascinated by the amazing diversity of tropical forests and will be surprised to learn that robust estimates of the number of tropical tree species are lacking. We show that there are at least 40,000, but possibly more than 53,000, tree species in the tropics, in contrast to only 124 across temperate Europe. Almost all tropical tree species are restricted to their respective continents, and the Indo-Pacific region appears to be as species-rich as tropical America, with each of these two regions being almost five times as rich in tree species as African tropical forests. Our study shows that most tree species are extremely rare, meaning that they may be under serious risk of extinction at current deforestation rates.

Significance: Identifying and explaining regional differences in tropical forest dynamics, structure, diversity, and composition are critical for anticipating region-specific responses to global environmental change. Floristic classifications are of fundamental importance for these efforts. Here we provide a global tropical forest classification that is explicitly based on community evolutionary similarity, resulting in identification of five major tropical forest regions and their relationships: ( i ) Indo-Pacific, ( ii ) Subtropical, ( iii ) African, ( iv ) American, and ( v ) Dry forests. African and American forests are grouped, reflecting their former western Gondwanan connection, while Indo-Pacific forests range from eastern Africa and Madagascar to Australia and the Pacific. The connection between northern-hemisphere Asian and American forests is confirmed, while Dry forests are identified as a single tropical biome.

In most woody plants, leaf morphological and physiological characteristics are extremely variable across environmental gradients, particularly across altitudinal gradients. Hippophae rhamnoides L., a dioecious and deciduous shrub species, occupies a wide range of habitats in the Wolong Nature Reserve, southwest China. We measured growth, sex ratio and morphological and physiological characteristics of leaves in male and female H. rhamnoides individuals along an altitudinal gradient. Shoot height (HT), leaf N concentration per unit dry mass (N_mass), leaf N concentration per unit area (N_area) and leaf carbon isotope composition (δ¹³C) were higher in males than in females, whereas females had higher specific leaf area (SLA), stomatal length (SL) and stomatal index (SI) (i.e., total stomatal length per unit leaf area) than males along the altitudinal gradient. Females also had higher values of stomatal density (SD) at all altitudes except 2800 m. The male:female ratio (MFR) was biased toward males at all altitudes except at 2800 m. Changes in HT, MFR, SLA, SD, SL, SI, N_mass, N_area and δ¹³C along the altitudinal gradient were nonlinear. Below 2800 m, HT, SLA, SD, SL and SI increased with increasing altitude, but above 2800 m they decreased with increasing altitude. In contrast, MFR, N_mass, N_area and δ¹³C showed the opposite patterns with altitude. Consequently, we confirmed our hypotheses: (1) stressful environments have a more negative impact on females than on males in a variety of ways; (2) under optimal growth conditions the sex ratio is even, but becomes male-biased as resources become limited; and (3) there is an optimum altitudinal range at around 2800 m for the growth of H. rhamnoides in the Wolong Nature Reserve.