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Forest tree communities are largely structured by interactions between phenotypes and their environments. Functional traits have been popularized as providing key insights into plant functional tradeoffs. Similarly, tree crown—stem diameter and tree height—stem diameter allometric relationships are likely to be strongly coordinated with functional trait tradeoff axes. Specifically, species with functional traits indicative of conservative strategies (i.e., dense wood, heavy seeds) should be related to tree architectures that have lower heights and wider crowns for a given stem diameter. For example, shade‐tolerant species in tropical forests are typically characterized as having dense wood, large seeds, and relatively broad crowns at early ontogenetic stages. Here, we focus on 14 dominant dicot tree species in a tropical forest. We utilized hierarchical Bayesian models to characterize species‐specific height and crown size allometric parameters. We sampled from the posterior distributions for these parameters and correlated them with six functional traits. We also characterize the expected height and crown size for a series of reference stem diameters to quantify the relationship between traits and tree architecture across size classes. We find little interspecific variation in allometric slopes, but clear variation in allometric intercepts. Allometeric height intercepts were negatively correlated with wood density and crown size intercepts were positively related to wood density and seed mass and negatively related to leaf percent phosphorus. Thus, interspecific variation in tree architecture is generated by interspecific variation in allometric intercepts and not slopes. These intercepts could be predicted using a handful of functional traits where conservative traits were indicative of trees that are relatively short and have larger crown sizes. This demonstrates a coordination of tropical tree life histories that can be characterized simultaneously with functional traits and tree allometries.

Maples (the genusAcer) represent important and beloved forest, urban, and ornamental trees distributed throughout the Northern hemisphere. They exist in a diverse array of native ranges and distributions, across spectrums of tolerance or decline, and have varying levels of susceptibility to biotic and abiotic stress. AmongAcerspecies, several stand out in their importance to economic interest. Here we report the first two chromosome‐scale genomes for North American species,Acer negundoandAcer saccharum. Both assembled genomes contain scaffolds corresponding to 13 chromosomes, withA. negundoat a length of 442 Mb, an N50 of 32 Mb, and 30 491 genes, andA. saccharumat a length of 626 Mb, an N50 of 46 Mb, and 40 074 genes. No recent whole genome duplications were detected, thoughA. saccharumhas local gene duplication and more recent bursts of transposable elements, as well as a large‐scale translocation between two chromosomes. Genomic comparison revealed thatA. negundohas a smaller genome with recent gene family evolution that is predominantly contracted and expansions that are potentially related to invasive tendencies and tolerance to abiotic stress. Examination of RNA sequencing data obtained fromA. saccharumgiven long‐term aluminum and calcium soil treatments at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest provided insights into genes involved in the aluminum stress response at the systemic level, as well as signs of compromised processes upon calcium deficiency, a condition contributing to maple decline.