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Contrasting pathways to tree longevity in gymnosperms and angiosperms

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Abstract

Tree longevity is thought to increase in growth-limiting, adverse environments, but a quantitative assessment of drivers of global variation in tree longevity is lacking. We assemble a global database of maximum longevity for 739 tree species and analyse associations between longevity and climate, soil, and species’ functional traits. Our results show two primary pathways towards long lifespans. The first is slow growth in resource-limited environments, consistent with the “adversity begets longevity” paradigm. The second pathway is through relief from abiotic constraints in productive environments. Despite notable exceptions, long-lived gymnosperms tend to follow the first path through slow growth in cold environments, whereas long-lived angiosperms tend to follow the second (“productivity”) path reaching maximum longevity generally in humid environments. For angiosperms, we identify two mechanisms for increased longevity under humid conditions. First, higher water availability increases species’ maximum tree height which is associated with greater longevities. Secondly, greater water availability increases stand density and inter-tree competition, limiting growth which may increase tree lifespan. The documented differences between gymnosperm and angiosperm longevity are likely rooted in intrinsic differences in hydraulic architecture that provide fitness advantages for gymnosperms under high abiotic stress, and for angiosperms under increased productivity or competition.

Data availability

Data on species’ maximum longevity, traits, and climate that support the findings of this study are available from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29876984. Original raw tree ring data from the ITRDB can be downloaded from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology/tree-ring, and tropical tree ring data compilations from https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Locoselli_et_al_2020_Global_tree-ring_analysis_reveals_rapid_decrease_in_tropical_tree_longevity_with_temperature_PNAS/13119842?file=25178405. Individual longevity records from following oldlists http://www.rmtrr.org/oldlist.htm, https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~adk/oldlisteast/, http://www.nativetreesociety.org/dendro/ents_maximum_ages.htm, https://www.oldgrowth.ca/oldtrees/. Tree height data can be downloaded from https://zenodo.org/record/6637599, and maximum height measurements were obtained from https://www.conifers.org and https://Monumentaltrees.com. Wood density data can be obtained from https://zenodo.org/records/13322441, and from https://doi.org/10.18167/DVN1/KRVF0E. Conduit density from https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1138, and conduit density, P50 and HSM from https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1138, and from https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav1332. Leaf traits from https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02403#Sec15, and seedmass data from https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/dp.php, database request No 30569. Mean climate and soil data for a species were obtained from the TreeGOER database https://zenodo.org/records/10008994, and gridded climate and elevation data from https://www.worldclim.org/data/worldclim21.html, growing season length and site level Net Primary Productivity (NPP) from https://chelsa-climate.org/. Species occurrence data from https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.77gcvq.

Code availability

Code to reproduce the Figs. 1–3 and Supplementary Figs. 3–6, 8, 9 and statistics are available from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29876984.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the contributors to International Tree-Ring Data Bank for making available raw tree-ring data, and we thank staff at the Direction des Inventaires Forestiers of the Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts du Québec for sharing tree-ring and sample plot data from the forest inventory program in Quebec, Canada. We further thank Ailene Ettinger, Gregory Peterson, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Jeremy Little, Jill Harvey, and Jordi Axelsons for contributing original data. This study was supported by the following grants; National Environmental Research Council grants NE/S008659/1 (R.B.), NE/N012542/1 (E.G.), and NE/R005079/1 (E.G., R.S.); FAPESP grants 12/50457-4, 2019/08783-0 (G.L., G.C.) and 17/5008-3 (G.L., G.C.); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq, grants 478503/2009 (G.L., G.C.), 311247/2021-0 (J.S.) and 441811/2020-5 (J.S.); CNPq/ FAPEAM, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas, grant number 01.02.016301.02630/2022-76 (J.S.); Czech Science Foundation research grants 24-12210 K (J.P. and M.S.) and 23-05272S (J.A., J.D., K.K., N.A., P.F., V.B.); Mobility Plus between the Czech Republic and Taiwan, NSTC-24-08 (J.A., J.D., K.K., N.A., P.F., V.B.); Czech Academy of Sciences long-term research development project No. RVO 67985939 (J.A., J.D., K.K., N.A., P.F., V.B.); Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah State University, and approved as journal paper number 9803 (R.J.D.); Academy of Finland, #339788 (S.H.); European Union, NextGenerationEU, Italian Ministry of University and Research under PNRR – M4C2-I1.4 Project code: CN00000033, Title: NBFC – National Biodiversity Future Center, CUP: J83C22000860007 (G.P.); Ministry of University and Research (MUR) via the Agritech National Research Centre, European Union Next-GenerationEU PNRR M4C2-I1.4 Project Code: CN00000022 (A.D.); Departments of Excellence (Law 232/2016) Project 2023-27 “Digital, Intelligent, Green and Sustainable (D.I.Ver.So)” (A.D.); National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology, award #1945910 (N.P.); Directorate for Biological Sciences, Emerging Frontiers, award #1241870 (N.P.); Redes Federales de Alto Impacto, Bosque-Clima CN32 (L.L., R.V.); MSMT INTER-EXCELLENCE, # LUAUS24258 (J.D.), Estonian Research Council, grant PSG1044 (J.A.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Roel J. W. Brienen & Emanuel Gloor

  2. Center of Nuclear Energy in Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, Brazil

    Giuliano Maselli Locosselli

  3. Physical Geography, University of Passau, Passau, Germany

    Stefan Krottenthaler

  4. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Robyn Wrigley

  5. College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA

    Steven L. Voelker

  6. Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Třeboň, Czech Republic

    Jan Altman, Nela Altmanova, Jiri Dolezal, Pavel Fibich & Kirill Korznikov

  7. Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jan Altman, Vaclav Bazant, Jakob Pavlin & Miroslav Svoboda

  8. Department of Geography, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Jan Altman

  9. Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Nela Altmanova, Jiri Dolezal & Pavel Fibich

  10. Department of Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Leander D. L. Anderegg & Gianluca Piovesan

  11. Department of ecological and biological science (DEB), Università della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

    Michele Baliva

  12. Department of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India

    Deepak Barua

  13. Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Bryan Black

  14. Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Peter M. Brown

  15. Department of Botany, University of São Paulo, Institute of Biosciences, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

    Gregorio Ceccantini

  16. Department of Wildland Resources and Ecology Center, Logan, UT, USA

    R. Justin DeRose

  17. Laboratorio de Dendrocronologia, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agricolas y Pecuarias, Gomez Palacio, Mexico

    Jose Villanueva Diaz

  18. Department of Agriculture and Forest Science (DAFNE), Università della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

    Alfredo Di Filippo

  19. Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts, Direction de la recherche forestière, Quebec city, QC, Canada

    Louis Duchesne

  20. Gymnosperm Database, Olympia, WA, USA

    Christopher Earle

  21. British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Prince George, BC, Canada

    Hardy Griesbauer

  22. Natural Resources Institute Finland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Samuli Helama

  23. Forest and Soil Ecology, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Stefan Klesse

  24. Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    David Lindenmayer

  25. Research Center of Forest Management Engineering of State Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China

    Shuhui Liu & Chunyu Zhang

  26. Laboratorio de Dendrocronología e Historia Ambiental IANIGLA/CONICET, Mendoza, Argentina

    Lidio Lopez & Ricardo Villalba

  27. CREAF, Bellaterra, Spain

    Maurizio Mencuccini

  28. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    Maurizio Mencuccini

  29. Department of forestry and renewable forest resources, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Thomas A. Nagel

  30. Independent Scholar, Maynard, MA, USA

    Neil Pederson

  31. Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Petersham, MA, USA

    Neil Pederson

  32. University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV, USA

    Christina Restaino

  33. Institute for Global Change Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Peter B. Reich

  34. Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA

    Peter B. Reich

  35. Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Regina, Regina, Canada

    David Sauchyn

  36. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Ecologia, Monitoramento e Uso Sustentável de Áreas Úmidas (MAUA), Manaus, AM, Brazil

    Jochen Schöngart

  37. Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Ogden, UT, USA

    John D. Shaw

  38. Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Dan Smith

  39. Department of Botany, St Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Devagiri, Calicut, Kerala, India

    Ron Sunny

  40. University of Northern British Columbia, Faculty of Environment, Prince George, BC, Canada

    Lisa J. Wood

Authors

  1. Roel J. W. Brienen
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  2. Giuliano Maselli Locosselli
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Contributions

R.B., G.L., S.K., E.G., and R.W. designed the study, R.B., R.W. and S.K. downloaded and compiled functional traits and ITRDB datasets, R.B., R.W. and S.K. analysed data, G.L. and S.K. compiled the tropical longevity datasets, M.M., D.B., R.S. and P.R. provided functional traits data, R.B., G.L., S.K., S.V., C.E., G.P. and N.P. revised and improved the longevity database, R.B., G.L., S.V., J.A., N.A., L.A., M.B., V.B., B.B., P.B., G.C., J.dR., J.V.D., A.D., J.D., L.D., C.E., P.F., H.G., S.H., S.K.l., K.K., D.L., S.L., L.L., T.N., J.P., N.P., G.P., C.R., D.S., J.S., J.D.S., D.S., M.S., R.V., L.W., and C.Z. contributed original longevity data, R.B. wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors revised the manuscript.

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Roel J. W. Brienen.

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Brienen, R.J.W., Locosselli, G.M., Krottenthaler, S. et al. Contrasting pathways to tree longevity in gymnosperms and angiosperms.
Nat Commun (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67619-2

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