Journal ArticleDOI
Pervasive density-dependent recruitment enhances seedling diversity in a tropical forest
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Observations in a lowland, moist forest in the Republic of Panamá found that negative density-dependent recruitment contributes significantly to the increase in diversity from seeds to seedling recruits.Abstract:
Negative density-dependent recruitment of seedlings, that is, seeds of a given species are less likely to become established seedlings if the density of that species is high, has been proposed to be an important mechanism contributing to the extraordinary diversity of tropical tree communities1,2,3 because it can potentially prevent any particular species from usurping all available space, either in close proximity to seed sources or at relatively larger spatial scales1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. However, density-dependent recruitment does not necessarily enhance community diversity14. Furthermore, although density-dependent effects have been found at some life stages in some species3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13, no study has shown that density-dependent recruitment affects community diversity14,15. Here we report the results of observations in a lowland, moist forest in the Republic of Panama in which the species identities of 386,027 seeds that arrived at 200 seed traps were compared with the species identities of 13,068 seedlings that recruited into adjacent plots over a 4-year period. Across the 200 sites, recruit seedling diversity was significantly higher than seed diversity. Part of this difference was explained by interspecies differences in average recruitment success. Even after accounting for these differences, however, negative density-dependent recruitment contributes significantly to the increase in diversity from seeds to seedling recruits.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Scale and species richness: towards a general, hierarchical theory of species diversity
TL;DR: The case is articulated for a top-down approach to theory building, in which scale is addressed explicitly and in which different response variables are clearly distinguished, to articulate the case for a general theory of diversity that must necessarily cover many disparate phenomena, at various scales of analysis.
Book
The ecology of seeds
Michael Fenner,Ken Thompson +1 more
TL;DR: This work has shown clear trends in the dispersal and regeneration of seeds in disturbed areas, and these trends are likely to continue into the next decade.
Journal ArticleDOI
Plant diversity in tropical forests: a review of mechanisms of species coexistence
TL;DR: Infrequent competition among suppressed understory plants, niche differences, and Janzen-Connell effects may facilitate the coexistence of the many rare plant species found in tropical forests while negative density dependence regulates the few most successful and abundant species.
Journal ArticleDOI
Spatial Patterns in the Distribution of Tropical Tree Species
Richard Condit,Peter S. Ashton,Patrick J. Baker,Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin,Savithri Gunatilleke,Nimal Gunatilleke,Stephen P. Hubbell,Robin B. Foster,Akira Itoh,James V. LaFrankie,Hua-Seng Lee,Elizabeth Losos,N. Manokaran,Raman Sukumar,Takuo Yamakura +14 more
TL;DR: The degree of aggregation in the distribution of 1768 tree species is examined based on the average density of conspecific trees in circular neighborhoods around each tree, and it is found that nearly every species was more aggregated than a random distribution.
Journal ArticleDOI
Disentangling the importance of ecological niches from stochastic processes across scales
Jonathan M. Chase,Jonathan Myers +1 more
TL;DR: A framework for disentangling the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic processes in generating site-to-site variation in species composition along ecological gradients and among biogeographic regions that differ in the size of the regional species pool is developed.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Sequence and organization of the human mitochondrial genome
Stephen Anderson,Alan T. Bankier,Bart Barrell,M.H.L. de Bruijn,Alan Coulson,J. Drouin,J. Drouin,Ian C. Eperon,Donald P. Nierlich,Donald P. Nierlich,Bruce A. Roe,Bruce A. Roe,Frederick Sanger,P. H. Schreier,Andrew J.H. Smith,Rodger Staden,Ian G. Young,Ian G. Young +17 more
TL;DR: The complete sequence of the 16,569-base pair human mitochondrial genome is presented and shows extreme economy in that the genes have none or only a few noncoding bases between them, and in many cases the termination codons are not coded in the DNA but are created post-transcriptionally by polyadenylation of the mRNAs.
Journal ArticleDOI
Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs.
TL;DR: The commonly observed high diversity of trees in tropical rain forests and corals on tropical reefs is a nonequilibrium state which, if not disturbed further, will progress toward a low-diversity equilibrium community as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests
TL;DR: Any event that increases the efficiency of the predators at eating seeds and seedlings of a given tree species may lead to a reduction in population density of the adults of that species and/or to increased distance between new adults and their parents.
Journal ArticleDOI
Herbivory and plant defenses in tropical forests
P. D. Coley and,J. A. Barone +1 more
TL;DR: Folivorous mammals do less damage than insects or pathogens but have evolved to cope with the high levels of plant defenses and, along with insect herbivores, may contribute to the maintenance of tree diversity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Light-Gap Disturbances, Recruitment Limitation, and Tree Diversity in a Neotropical Forest
Stephen P. Hubbell,Robin B. Foster,Sean T. O'Brien,Kyle E. Harms,Richard Condit,B. Wechsler,S. J. Wright,S. Loo de Lao +7 more
TL;DR: Strong recruitment limitation appears to decouple the gap disturbance regime from control of tree diversity in this tropical forest, where the species composition of gaps was unpredictable even for pioneer tree species.