Using our forest plot series on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi we assessed how metal accumulation shapes abundance in 283 tree species.

Abundance is a commonly used proxy of species success in a community and there has been a rich history of its measurement from the densest rainforests to the freezing tundra. 

A pattern often seen is that species that have traits very different to most other species tend to be rare, for example the most massive species are infrequently seen be they towering dipterocarps or the largest mammals. Plants that accumulate high concentrations of metals are similarly unique. What we found is that these accumulators are as expected rare but this is dependent upon evolutionary history. Interestingly, we found that three clades that are famous for Nickel accumulation do not have low abundance when they accumulate metals suggesting they could benefit from having localised high metal caused by leaf litter breakdown or greater defense against herbivores or pathogens that often limit abundance.