Journal article
Tree demographic strategies largely overlap across succession in Neotropical wet and dry forest communities
Ecology, Vol.105(7), pp.1-16
2024
PMID: 38763891
Abstract
Secondary tropical forests play an increasingly important role in carbon budgets and biodiversity conservation. Understanding successional trajectories is therefore imperative for guiding forest restoration and climate change mitigation efforts. Forest succession is driven by the demographic strategies-combinations of growth, mortality and recruitment rates-of the tree species in the community. However, our understanding of demographic diversity in tropical tree species stems almost exclusively from old-growth forests. Here, we assembled demographic information from repeated forest inventories along chronosequences in two wet (Costa Rica, Panama) and two dry (Mexico) Neotropical forests to assess whether the ranges of demographic strategies present in a community shift across succession. We calculated demographic rates for >500 tree species while controlling for canopy status to compare demographic diversity (i.e., the ranges of demographic strategies) in early successional (0-30 years), late successional (30-120 years) and old-growth forests using two-dimensional hypervolumes of pairs of demographic rates. Ranges of demographic strategies largely overlapped across successional stages, and early successional stages already covered the full spectrum of demographic strategies found in old-growth forests. An exception was a group of species characterized by exceptionally high mortality rates that was confined to early successional stages in the two wet forests. The range of demographic strategies did not expand with succession. Our results suggest that studies of long-term forest monitoring plots in old-growth forests, from which most of our current understanding of demographic strategies of tropical tree species is derived, are surprisingly representative of demographic diversity in general, but do not replace the need for further studies in secondary forests.
Details
- Title
- Tree demographic strategies largely overlap across succession in Neotropical wet and dry forest communities
- Authors
- Markus E Schorn (Corresponding Author) - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity ResearchStephan Kambach - Martin Luther University Halle-WittenbergRobin L Chazdon - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Tropical Forests and People Research CentreDylan Craven - Universidad MayorCaroline E Farrior - The University of Texas at AustinJorge A Meave - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoRodrigo Muñoz - Wageningen University & ResearchMichiel van Breugel - National University of SingaporeLucy Amissah - Forestry Research Institute of GhanaFrans Bongers - Wageningen University & ResearchBruno Hérault - Société de Développement des ForêtsCatarina C Jakovac - Wageningen University & ResearchNatalia Norden - Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research InstituteLourens Poorter - Wageningen University & ResearchMasha T van der Sande - Wageningen University & ResearchChristian Wirth - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity ResearchDiego Delgado - Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza CatieDaisy H Dent - University of StirlingSaara J DeWalt - Clemson UniversityJuan M Dupuy - Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán A.C.Bryan Finegan - Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza CatieJefferson S Hall - Smithsonian Tropical Research InstituteJosé L Hernández-Stefanoni - Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán A.C.Omar R Lopez - Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Servicios de Alta TecnologíaNadja Rüger - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
- Publication details
- Ecology, Vol.105(7), pp.1-16
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Date published
- 2024
- DOI
- 10.1002/ecy.4321
- ISSN
- 1939-9170
- PMID
- 38763891
- Copyright note
- © 2024 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Data Availability
- Data and code (Schorn et al., 2024) are available in Dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfz4h.
- Organisation Unit
- Tropical Forests and People Research Centre; Forest Research Institute
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991027291802621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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