## 5 Conclusions  
Our study with the CARAIB dynamic vegetation model shows the specific response of tree species to climate change, urging for impact assessments carried out at the species level in parallel with ecosystem analyses. In Africa more than anywhere else, the lack of observations for species inventory and measurements of morpho-physiological traits limits thus our knowledge of species physiology and distribution. CARAIB results highlight the large uncertainties in the climate projections for the end of the century and in the long-term physiological responses to CO\({}_{2}\) concentration increase. The model projects contrasted future species distributions and functioning assuming or not a stimulation of plant growth by CO\({}_{2}\), with NPP and biomass decreases (more or less pronounced) regardless of the long-term fertilization hypothesis.  
**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at [[http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/11/722/s1](http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/11/722/s1)]([http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/11/722/s1](http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/11/722/s1)), Supplementary S1 (Figure): Simulated NPP for the 12 studied species, Supplementary S2 (Table): Information about the selected CMIP5 global climate models, Supplementary S3 (Figures 1 and 2): Annual mean temperature and annual precipitation anomalies between the 2080–2099 period and the reference 1980–1999 period for the 7 selected GCMs, Supplementary S4 (Figures 1-3): Lost area in the species current distribution, expansion area beyond the current distribution and species biomass change on current distribution between the 2080-2099 period and the reference 1980-1999 period obtained with the seven climate projections, Supplementary S5 (Figure): Changes in biomass per unit area between 2080-2099 and the reference 1980-1999 period for the 12 studied species (the magnitude of change expressed as a multiple of the spatial average of the 1980-1999 biomass standard deviation over the species current distribution area).  
**Author Contributions:** [PERSON] and [PERSON] conceived and designed the study; [PERSON] and [PERSON] acquired data about respectively observed species occurrences and species-specific morpho-physiological traits; [PERSON] prepared all the input data of the model; [PERSON] and [PERSON] performed the simulations; [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] analysed the results, [PERSON] and [PERSON] wrote the manuscript; and [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] provided some core advice, reviewed and edited the paper.  
**Funding:** Funding for this research by the BIOSERF and the AFRIFORD projects within the SSD and BRAIN-be programs of Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) is gratefully acknowledged.  
**Acknowledgments:** We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Supplementary S of this paper) for producing and making available their model outputs. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. The study has been supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits ([[http://www.try-db.org](http://www.try-db.org)]([http://www.try-db.org](http://www.try-db.org))). The TRY initiative and database is hosted, developed and maintained by [PERSON] and [PERSON] (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany). TRY is currently supported by DIVERSITAS/Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. The study equally draws on data from the PROTA database (www.prota4u.org) and COBIMFO project (BELSPO).  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.