Tropical ecologists have long recognized rainfall as the key climate filter shaping tropical ecosystem structure and function across space and time. Still, tropical ecologists have historically had a limited toolkit for characterizing rainfall, largely relying on simple metrics like mean annual precipitation (MAP) and dry season length to characterize rainfall regimes that vary along many more dimensions. Here, we review methods for quantifying dimensions of rainfall variability on multiple time scales, with a focus on ecological applications of these methods. We also discuss key considerations for tropical ecologists looking to use rainfall metrics that better align with hypothesized biological or ecological mechanisms or that more effectively describe rainfall variability in the systems we study and provide a toolkit (R scripts and gridded datasets) to do so. We argue that incorporating more sophisticated approaches to quantify rainfall variability into study design and statistical analyses will enhance our understanding of past, ongoing, and future changes in tropical ecosystems.

中文翻译：

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超越MAP：热带生态系统降雨变化量的指南

热带生态学家早就认识到降雨是塑造热带生态系统在空间和时间上的结构和功能的关键气候过滤器。尽管如此，从历史上看，热带生态学家使用的降雨特征描述工具仍然很有限，主要依靠简单的度量标准（例如年均降雨量（MAP）和旱季长度）来描述降雨尺度随更多维度变化的特征。在这里，我们回顾了在多个时间尺度上量化降雨变化量的方法，重点是这些方法的生态应用。我们还讨论了热带生态学家的主要考虑因素，他们希望使用降雨指标来更好地与假设的生物或生态机制保持一致，或者更有效地描述我们研究的系统中的降雨变异性，并为此提供工具包（R脚本和网格化数据集）。我们认为，将更复杂的方法量化降雨的变化性纳入研究设计和统计分析，将增进我们对热带生态系统过去，正在进行和未来变化的理解。