Morphological Trait-Based Typology Captures Carbon Strategies but Not Drought Tolerance of Tree Species in Dry and Cloud Tropical Forest

Tropical forests host a remarkable diversity of tree species with contrasting functional strategies. Typologies based on easily measurable morphological traits (soft traits) are widely used to group species along the plant economics spectrum, yet their capacity to reflect drought tolerance remains heavily debated. This study evaluates whether a typological framework based on five soft traits (specific leaf area, leaf area, wood density, stomatal density, and leaf trichome density) can capture both carbon acquisition and drought response strategies. We examined 14 dominant canopy species from contrasting tropical ecosystems (cloud and dry forests) of the Lesser Antilles. A typology comprising three groups was proposed, which differed significantly along the acquisitive–conservative spectrum, demonstrating the utility of soft traits for characterizing carbon management and growth potential at the regional scale. However, critical hard traits such as xylem vulnerability (P50) and turgor loss point (ψtlp) were decoupled from this classification. Our findings confirm the value of soft-trait typologies for modeling local carbon dynamics but highlight their limitations in predicting complex physiological drought vulnerability. Integrating phenological and hydraulic proxies into functional classifications is essential to accurately represent species drought tolerance in an increasingly water-limited Caribbean archipelago.