Widespread density-dependent seedling mortality promotes species coexistence in a highly diverse Amazonian rain forest

Ecology

Volumn 91, Issue 12, 2010, Pages 3675-3685

  Metz, Margaret R ^a   Sousa, Wayne P ^a   Valencia, Renato ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DEL ECUADOR   (Ecuador)

Author keywords

Community compensatory trend; Density dependent mortality; Diversity; Ecuador; Janzen Connell hypothesis; Phylogenetic distance; Seedling dynamics; Tropical forest; Yasun National Park

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; ADULT; COEXISTENCE; COHORT ANALYSIS; COMPETITION (ECOLOGY); DENSITY DEPENDENCE; LIFE HISTORY; MORTALITY; NATURAL ENEMY; PHYLOGENETICS; POPULATION DENSITY; POPULATION DISTRIBUTION; RAINFOREST; RECRUITMENT (POPULATION DYNAMICS); SEEDLING; SURVIVAL; TIMESCALE;

ARTICLE; BIODIVERSITY; ECUADOR; PHYLOGEOGRAPHY; PHYSIOLOGY; POPULATION DENSITY; SEEDLING; TREE;

BIODIVERSITY; ECUADOR; PHYLOGEOGRAPHY; POPULATION DENSITY; SEEDLING; TREES;

ECUADOR; NAPO [ECUADOR]; YASUNI NATIONAL PARK;

EID: 78650338306     PISSN: 00129658     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1890/08-2323.1     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Adler, P. B., J. Hille Ris Lambers, and J. M. Levine. 2007. A niche for neutrality. Ecology Letters 10:95-104.
2. Brokaw, N. V. L. 1985. Gap-phase regeneration in a tropical forest. Ecology 66:682-687.
3. Carson, W. P., J. T. Anderson, E. G. Leigh, Jr., and S. A. Schnitzer. 2008. Challenges associated with testing and falsifying the Janzen-Connell hypothesis: A review and critique. Pages 210-241 in W. P. Carson and S. A. Schnitzer, editors. Tropical forest community ecology. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
4. Chesson, P. L. 1985. Coexistence of competitors in spatially and temporally varying environments: A look at the combined effects of different sorts of variability. Theoretical Population Biology 28:263-287.
5. Chesson, P. 2000. Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 31: 343-366.
6. Clark, D. A., and D. B. Clark. 1984. Spacing dynamics of a tropical rain-forest tree: Evaluation of the Janzen-Connell model. American Naturalist 124:769-788.
7. Clark, D. B., and D. A. Clark. 1985. Seedling dynamics of a tropical tree: Impacts of herbivory and meristem damage. Ecology 66:1884-1892.
8. Comita, L. S., and S. P. Hubbell. 2009. Local neighborhood and species' shade tolerance influence survival in a diverse seedling bank. Ecology 90:328-334.
9. Connell, J. H. 1971. On the role of natural enemies in preventing competitive exclusion in some marine animals and rain forest trees. Pages 298-312 in P. J. van der Boer and G. R. Gradell, editors. Dynamics of numbers in populations.Center for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
10. Connell, J. H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs: High diversity of trees and corals is maintained only in a non-equilibrium state. Science 199:1302-1310.
11. Connell, J. H., and P. T. Green. 2000. Seedling dynamics over thirty-two years in a tropical rain forest tree. Ecology 81:568-584.
12. Connell, J. H., J. G. Tracey, and L. J. Webb. 1984. Compensatory recruitment, growth, and mortality as factors maintaining rain-forest tree diversity. Ecological Monographs 54:141-164.
13. Denslow, J. S. 1987. Tropical rain forest gaps and tree species diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 18: 431-451.
14. De Steven, D. 1994. Tropical tree seedling dynamics: Recruitment patterns and their population consequences for three canopy species in Panama. Journal of Tropical Ecology 10: 369-383.
15. Dormann, C. F., et al. 2007. Methods to account for spatial autocorrelation in the analysis of species distributional data: A review. Ecography 30:609-628.
16. Gilbert, G. S., K. E. Harms, D. N. Hamill, and S. P. Hubbell. 2001. Effects of seedling size, El Nino drought, seedling density, and distance to nearest conspecific adult on 6-year survival of Ocotea whitei seedlings in Panama. Oecologia 127: 509-516.
17. Gilbert, G. S., and C. O. Webb. 2007. Phylogenetic signal in plant pathogen-host range. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:4979-4983.
18. Grubb, P. J. 1977. Maintenance of species richness in plant communities: Importance of the regeneration niche. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 52:107-145.
19. Hammond, D. S., and V. K. Brown. 1998. Disturbance, phenology and life-history characteristics: Factors influencing distance/density-dependent attack on tropical seeds and seedlings. Pages 51-78 in D. M. Newbery, H. H. T. Prins, and N. D. Brown, editors. Dynamics of tropical communities. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
20. Harms, K. E., S. J. Wright, O. Calderon, A. Hernandez, and E. A. Herre. 2000. Pervasive density-dependent recruitment enhances seedling diversity in a tropical forest. Nature 404: 493-495.
21. Hartshorn, G. S. 1980. Neotropical forest dynamics. Biotropica 12:23-30.
22. Hosmer, D. W., and S. Lemeshow. 2000. Applied logistic regression. John Wiley and Sons, New York, New York, USA.
23. Howe, H. F., and J. Smallwood. 1982. Ecology of seed dispersal. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 13: 201-228.
24. Janzen, D. H. 1970. Herbivores and the number of tree species in tropical forests. American Naturalist 104:501-528.
25. Kembel, S. W. 2009. Disentangling niche and neutral influences on community assembly: Assessing the performance of community phylogenetic structure tests. Ecology Letters 12: 949-960.
26. Kraft, N. J. B., and D. D. Ackerly. 2010. Functional trait and phylogenetic tests of community assembly across spatial scales in an Amazonian forest. Ecological Monographs 80: 401-421.
27. Kraft, N. J. B., W. K. Cornwell, C. O. Webb, and D. D. Ackerly. 2007. Trait evolution, community assembly, and the phylogenetic structure of ecological communities. American Naturalist 170:271-283.
28. Kress, W. J., D. L. Erickson, F. A. Jones, N. G. Swenson, R. Perez, O. Sanjur, and E. Bermingham. 2009. Plant DNA barcodes and a community phylogeny of a tropical forest dynamics plot in Panama. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106:18621-18626.
29. Leigh, E. G., P. Davidar, C. W. Dick, J. P. Puyravaud, J. Terborgh, H. ter Steege, and S. J. Wright. 2004. Why do some tropical forests have so many species of trees? Biotropica 36:447-473.
30. Losos, E. C., and E. G. Leigh. 2004. Tropical forest diversity and dynamism: Findings from a large-scale plot network. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
31. Magurran, A. E. 1988. Ecological diversity and its measurement. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
32. Metz, M. R. 2007. Spatiotemporal variation in seedling dynamics and the maintenance of diversity in an Amazonian forest. Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
33. Metz, M. R., L. S. Comita, Y.-Y. Chen, N. Norden, R. Condit, S. P. Hubbell, I.-F. Sun, M. N. N. Supardi, and S. J. Wright. 2008. Temporal and spatial variability in seedling dynamics: A cross-site comparison in four lowland tropical forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology 24:9-18.
34. O'Brien, S. T., S. P. Hubbell, P. Spiro, R. Condit, and R. B. Foster. 1995. Diameter, height, crown, and age relationships in eight neotropical tree species. Ecology 76:1926-1939.
35. Paine, C. E. T., K. E. Harms, S. A. Schnitzer, and W. P. Carson. 2008. Weak competition among tropical tree seedlings: Implications for species coexistence. Biotropica 40:432-440.
36. Persson, V. 2006. Effects of climatic seasonality on reproductive phenology of tropical forest plants. Dissertation. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
37. Peters, H. A. 2003. Neighbour-regulated mortality: The influence of positive and negative density dependence on tree populations in species-rich tropical forests. Ecology Letters 6: 757-765.
38. Pitman, N. C. A., J. W. Terborgh, M. R. Silman, P. Nú ñez, D. A. Neill, C. E. Ceron, W. A. Palacios, and M. Aulestia. 2001. Dominance and distribution of tree species in upper Amazonian terra firme forests. Ecology 82:2101-2117.
39. Prinzing, A., W. Durka, S. Klotz, and R. Brandl. 2001. The niche of higher plants: Evidence for phylogenetic conservatism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 268:2383-2389.
40. Queenborough, S. A., D. F. R. P. Burslem, N. C. Garwood, and R. Valencia. 2007. Neighborhood and community interactions determine the spatial pattern of tropical tree seedling survival. Ecology 88:2248-2258.
41. R Development Core Team. 2007. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
42. Svenning, J. C., T. Fabbro, and S. J. Wright. 2008. Seedling interactions in a tropical forest in Panama. Oecologia 155: 143-150.
43. Valencia, R., R. Condit, R. B. Foster, K. Romoleroux, G. Villa Muñoz, J. C. Svenning, E. Magard, M. Bass, E. C. Losos, and H. Balslev. 2004a. Yasuni forest dynamics plot, Ecuador. Pages 609-620 in E. C. Losos and E. G. Leigh, editors. Tropical forest diversity and dynamism: Findings from a large-scale plot network. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
44. Valencia, R., R. B. Foster, G. Villa, R. Condit, J. C. Svenning, C. Hernandez, K. Romoleroux, E. Losos, E. Magard, and H. Balslev. 2004b. Tree species distributions and local habitat variation in the Amazon: Large forest plot in eastern Ecuador. Journal of Ecology 92:214-229.
45. Vormisto, J., H. Tuomisto, and J. Oksanen. 2004. Palm distribution patterns in Amazonian rainforests: What is the role of topographic variation? Journal of Vegetation Science 15:485-494.
46. Webb, C. O. 2000. Exploring the phylogenetic structure of ecological communities: An example for rain forest trees. American Naturalist 156:145-155.
47. Webb, C. O., D. D. Ackerly, and S. W. Kembel. 2008. Phylocom: Software for the analysis of phylogenetic community structure and trait evolution. Bioinformatics 24:2098-2100.
48. Webb, C. O., D. D. Ackerly, M. A. McPeek, and M. J. Donoghue. 2002. Phylogenies and community ecology. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 33:475-505.
49. Webb, C. O., and M. J. Donoghue. 2005. Phylomatic: Tree assembly for applied phylogenetics. Molecular Ecology Notes 5:181-183.
50. Webb, C. O., G. S. Gilbert, and M. J. Donoghue. 2006. Phylodiversity-dependent seedling mortality, size structure, and disease in a Bornean rain forest. Ecology 87(Supplement):S123-S132.
51. Webb, C. O., and D. R. Peart. 1999. Seedling density dependence promotes coexistence of Bornean rain forest trees. Ecology 80:2006-2017.
52. Whitmore, T. C. 1984. Tropical rain forests of the far east. Clarendon, Oxford, UK.
53. Whitmore, T. C. 1996. A review of some aspects of tropical rain forest seedling ecology with suggestions for further inquiry. Pages 3-39 in M. D. Swaine, editor. The ecology of tropical forest tree seedlings. UNESCO, Paris, France.
54. Wikström, N., V. Savolainen, and M. W. Chase. 2001. Evolution of the angiosperms: Calibrating the family tree. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 268:2211-2220.
55. Wills, C. 1996. Safety in diversity. New Scientist 149:38-42.
56. Wright, S. J. 2002. Plant diversity in tropical forests: A review of mechanisms of species coexistence. Oecologia 130:1-14.