Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T16:46:08.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Temporal and spatial variability in seedling dynamics: a cross-site comparison in four lowland tropical forests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2008

Margaret R. Metz ,
Liza S. Comita ,
Yu-Yun Chen ,
Natalia Norden ,
Richard Condit ,
Stephen P. Hubbell ,
I-Fang Sun ,
Nur Supardi bin Md. Noor  and
S. Joseph Wright
Margaret R. Metz*
Affiliation:
Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-3140, USA
Liza S. Comita
Affiliation:
Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7271, USA
Yu-Yun Chen
Affiliation:
Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7271, USA
Natalia Norden
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique, UMR 7154, Université Paul Sabatier, F-31062 Toulouse, France
Richard Condit
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843-03092, Panamá, Republic of Panamá National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, 735 State St., Santa Barbara, CA, 93101, USA
Stephen P. Hubbell
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843-03092, Panamá, Republic of Panamá
I-Fang Sun
Affiliation:
Center for Tropical Ecology and Biodiversity, Tunghai University, Taiwan, R.O.C. 40704
Nur Supardi bin Md. Noor
Affiliation:
Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Kepong, 52109 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
S. Joseph Wright
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843-03092, Panamá, Republic of Panamá
*
1Corresponding author. Email: mmetz@berkeley.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Spatial and temporal variation in seedling dynamics was assessed using records of community-wide seedling demography collected with identical monitoring methods at four tropical lowland forests in Panama, Malaysia, Ecuador and French Guiana for periods of between 3 and 10 y. At each site, the fates of between 8617 and 391 777 seedlings were followed through annual censuses of the 370–1008 1-m2 seedling plots. Within-site spatial and inter-annual variation in density, recruitment, growth and mortality was compared with among-site variability using Bayesian hierarchical modelling to determine the generality of each site's patterns and potential for meaningful comparisons among sites. The Malaysian forest, which experiences community-wide masting, was the most variable in both seedling density and recruitment. However, density varied year-to-year at all sites (CVamong years at site = 8–43%), driven largely by high variability in recruitment rates (CV = 40–117%). At all sites, recruitment was more variable than mortality (CV = 5–64%) or growth (CV = 12–51%). Increases in mortality rates lagged 1 y behind large recruitment events. Within-site spatial variation and inter-annual differences were greater than differences among site averages in all rates, emphasizing the value of long-term comparative studies when generalizing how spatial and temporal variation drive patterns of recruitment in tropical forests.

Keywords

Barro Colorado IslandEl NiñomastingNouraguesPasohrecruitmentseedling demographyYasuní
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 9 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

LITERATURE CITED

AUGSPURGER, C. K. 1983. Seed dispersal of the tropical tree, Platypodium elegans, and the escape of its seedlings from fungal pathogens. Journal of Ecology 71:759–771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BONGERS, F., CHARLES-DOMINIQUE, P., FORGET, P.-M. & THERY, M. (eds). 2001. Nouragues: dynamics and plant animal interactions in a Neotropical rainforest. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. 421 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CHEN, Y. 2007. Reproductive phenology in a lowland dipterocarp forest and its consequences for seedling recruitment. PhD thesis, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.Google Scholar
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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CLARK, J. S. 2005. Why environmental scientists are becoming Bayesians. Ecology Letters 8:2–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CONDIT, R. 1995. Research in large, long-term tropical forest plots. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10:18–22.Google Scholar
CONDIT, R., ASHTON, P. S., MANOKARAN, N., LAFRANKIE, J. V., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 1999. Dynamics of the forest communities at Pasoh and Barro Colorado: comparing two 50-ha plots. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 354:1739–1748.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CONDIT, R., AGUILAR, S., HERNANDEZ, A., PEREZ, R., LAO, S., ANGEHR, G., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 2004. Tropical forest dynamics across a rainfall gradient and the impact of an El Niño dry season. Journal of Tropical Ecology 20:51–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CONDIT, R., ASHTON, P., BUNYAVEJCHEWIN, S., DATTARAJA, H. S., DAVIES, S., ESUFALI, S., EWANGO, C., FOSTER, R., GUNATILLEKE, I. A U. N., GUNATILLEKE, C. V. S., HALL, P., HARMS, K. E., HART, T., HERNANDEZ, C., HUBBELL, S., ITOH, A., KIRATIPRAYOON, S., LAFRANKIE, J., DE LAO, S. L., MAKANA, J. R., NOOR, M. N. S., KASSIM, A. R., RUSSO, S., SUKUMAR, R., SAMPER, C., SURESH, H. S., TAN, S., THOMAS, S., VALENCIA, R., VALLEJO, M., VILLA, G. & ZILLIO, T. 2006. The importance of demographic niches to tree diversity. Science 313:98–101.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CONNELL, J. H. 1971. On the role of natural enemies in preventing competitive exclusion in some marine animals and in rain forest trees. Pp. 298–312 in denBoer, P. J. Boer, P. J. & Gradwell, G. R. (eds.). Dynamics of populations. PUDOC Wageningen.Google Scholar
CONNELL, J. H. & GREEN, P. T. 2000. Seedling dynamics over thirty-two years in a tropical rain forest tree. Ecology 81:568–584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CORLETT, R. T. & PRIMACK, R. B. 2006. Tropical rainforests and the need for cross-continental comparisons. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21:104–110.Google Scholar
CURRAN, L. M. & WEBB, C. O. 2000. Experimental tests of the spatiotemporal scale of seed predation in mast-fruiting Dipterocarpaceae. Ecological Monographs 70:129–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DALLING, J. W., HUBBELL, S. P. & SILVERA, K. 1998. Seed dispersal, seedling establishment and gap partitioning among tropical pioneer trees. Journal of Ecology 4:674–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DALLING, J. W., MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., WRIGHT, S. J. & HUBBELL, S. P. 2002. Role of dispersal in the recruitment limitation of neotropical pioneer species. Journal of Ecology 90:714–727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DESTEVEN, D. & WRIGHT, S. J. 2002. Consequences of variable reproduction for seedling recruitment in three neotropical species. Ecology 83:2315–2327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
FRAGOSO, J. V. M. 1997. Tapir-generated seed shadows: scale-dependent patchiness in the Amazon rain forest. Journal of Ecology 85:519–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GILBERT, G. S. 2002. Evolutionary ecology of plant diseases in natural ecosystems. Annual Review of Phytopathology 40:13–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
GILKS, W. R., RICHARDSON, S. & SPIEGELHALTER, D. J. (eds.) 1996. Markov Chain Monte Carlo in practice. Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, Boca Raton. 512 pp.Google Scholar
GRUBB, P. J. 1977. The maintenance of species richness in plant communities: the importance of the regeneration niche. Biological Reviews 52:107–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HALL, J. S., ASHTON, M. S. & BERLYN, G. P. 2003. Seedling performance of four sympatric Entandrophragma species (Meliaceae) under simulated fertility and moisture regimes of a Central African rain forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 19:55–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HARMS, K. E., WRIGHT, S. J., CALDERÓN, O., HERNÁNDEZ, A. & HERRE, E. A. 2000. Pervasive density-dependent recruitment enhances seedling diversity in a tropical forest. Nature 404:493–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HARMS, K. E., POWERS, J. S. & MONTGOMERY, R. A. 2004. Variation in small sapling density, understory cover, and resource availability in four Neotropical forests. Biotropica 36:40–51.Google Scholar
HUBBELL, S. P., FOSTER, R. B., O'BRIEN, S. T., HARMS, K. E., CONDIT, R., WECHSLER, B., WRIGHT, S. J. & LOO DE LAO, S. 1999. Light-gap disturbances, recruitment limitation, and tree diversity in a neotropical forest. Science 283:554–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
JANZEN, D. H. 1970. Herbivores and the number of tree species in tropical forests. The American Naturalist 104:501–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
JULLIOT, C. 1997. Impact of seed dispersal by red howler monkeys Alouatta seniculus on the seedling population in the understorey of tropical rain forest. Journal of Ecology 85:431–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LAFRANKIE, J. V., ASHTON, P. S., CHUYONG, G. B., CO, L., CONDIT, R., DAVIES, S. J., FOSTER, R., HUBBELL, S. P., KENFACK, D., LAGUNZAD, D., LOSOS, E. C., NOR, N. S. M., TAN, S., THOMAS, D. W., VALENCIA, R. & VILLA, G. 2006. Contrasting structure and composition of the understory in species-rich tropical rain forests. Ecology 87:2298–2305.Google Scholar
LOSOS, E. C. & LEIGH, E. G. (eds.) 2004. Tropical forest diversity and dynamism: findings from a large-scale plot network. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 645 pp.Google Scholar
MAKANA, J. & THOMAS, S. C. 2004. Dispersal limits natural recruitment of African mahoganies. Oikos 106:67–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MALHI, Y. & WRIGHT, J. 2004. Spatial patterns and recent trends in the climate of tropical rainforest regions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 359:311–329.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MALHI, Y., PHILLIPS, O. L., LLOYD, J., BAKER, T., WRIGHT, J., ALMEIDA, S., ARROYO, L., FREDERIKSEN, T., GRACE, J., HIGUCHI, N., KILLEEN, T., LAURANCE, W. F., LEAÑO, C., LEWIS, S., MEIR, P., MONTEAGUDO, A., NEILL, D., NÚÑEZ VARGAS, P., PANFIL, S. N., PATIÑO, S., PITMAN, N., QUESADA, C. A., RUDAS-LL, A., SALOMÃO, R., SALESKA, S., SILVA, N., SILVEIRA, M., SOMBROEK, W. G., VALENCIA, R., VÁSQUEZ MARTÍNEZ, R., VIEIRA, I. C. G. & VINCETI, B. 2002. An international network to monitor the structure, composition and dynamics of Amazonian forests (RAINFOR). Journal of Vegetation Science 13:439–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MONTGOMERY, R. A. & CHAZDON, R. l. 2002. Light gradient partitioning by tropical tree seedlings in the absence of canopy gaps. Oecologia 131:165–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., LEVIN, S. A. & KEYMER, J. E. 2003. Theoretical perspectives on evolution of long-distance dispersal and the example of specialized pests. Ecology 84:1957–1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NATHAN, R. & MULLER-LANDAU, H. C. 2002. Spatial patterns of seed dispersal, their determinants and consequences for recruitment. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15:278–285.Google Scholar
NORDEN, N., CHAVE, J., CAUBERE, A., CHATELET, P., FERRONI, N., FORGET, P.-M. & THEBAUD, C. 2007. Is temporal variation of seedling communities determined by environment or by seed arrival? A test in a neotropical forest. Journal of Ecology 95:507–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PALMIOTTO, P. A., DAVIES, S. J., VOGT, K. A., ASHTON, M. S., VOGT, D. J. & ASHTON, P. S. 2004. Soil-related habitat specialization in dipterocarp rain forest tree species in Borneo. Journal of Ecology 92:609–623.Google Scholar
PAZ, H. 2003. Root/shoot allocation and root architecture in seedlings: variation among forest sites, microhabitats, and ecological groups. Biotropica 35:318–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PERSSON, V. 2006. Effects of climatic seasonality on reproductive phenology of tropical forest plants. PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.Google Scholar
PITMAN, N. C. A., TERBORGH, J. W., SILMAN, M. R., NUÑEZ, P., NEILL, D. A., CERÓN, C., PALACIOS, W. A. & AULESTIA, M. 2002. A comparison of tree species diversity in two upper Amazonian forests. Ecology 83:3210–3244.Google Scholar
PRIMACK, R. B. & CORLETT, R. T. 2005. Tropical rain forests: an ecological and biogeographical comparison. Blackwell Sciences, New York. 319 pp.Google Scholar
SAKAI, S. 2002. General flowering in lowland mixed dipterocarp forests of South-east Asia. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 75:233–247.Google Scholar
SAKAI, S., HARRISON, R. D., MOMOSE, K., KURAJI, K., NAGAMASU, H., YASUNARI, T., CHONG, L. & NAKASHIZUKA, T. 2006. Irregular droughts trigger mass flowering in aseasonal tropical forests in Asia. American Journal of Botany 93:1134–1139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SCHUPP, E. W. 1988. Seed and early seedling predation in the forest understory and in treefall gaps. Oikos 51:71–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SCHUPP, E. W. 1990. Annual variation in seedfall, postdispersal predation, and recruitment of a Neotropical tree. Ecology 71:504–515.Google Scholar
SUN, I., CHEN, Y., HUBBELL, S. P., WRIGHT, S. J. & NOOR, N. S. 2007. Seed predation during general flowering events of varying magnitude in a Malaysian rain forest. Journal of Ecology 95:818–827.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TER STEEGE, H., PITMAN, N., SABATIER, D., CASTELLANOS, H., VAN DER HOUT, P., DALY, D. C., SILVEIRA, M., PHILLIPS, O., VASQUEZ, R., VAN ANDEL, T., DUIVENVOORDEN, J., DE OLIVEIRA, A. A., EK, R., LILWAH, R., THOMAS, R., VAN ESSEN, J., BAIDER, C., MAAS, P., MORI, S., TERBORGH, J., VARGAS, P. N., MOGOLLON, H. & MORAWETZ, W. 2003. A spatial model of tree alpha-diversity and tree density for the Amazon. Biodiversity and Conservation 12:2255–2277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
URIARTE, M., CANHAM, C. D., THOMPSON, J., ZIMMERMAN, J. K. & BROKAW, N. 2005. Seedling recruitment in a hurricane-driven tropical forest: light limitation, density-dependence and the spatial distribution of parent trees. Journal of Ecology 93:291–304.Google Scholar
WEBB, C. O. & PEART, D. R. 1999. Seedling density dependence promotes coexistence of Bornean rain forest trees. Ecology 80:2006–2017.Google Scholar
WILLS, C. & CONDIT, R. 1999. Similar non-random processes maintain diversity in two tropical rainforests. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 266:1445–1452.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, S. J. 2002. Plant diversity in tropical forests: a review of mechanisms of species coexistence. Oecologia 130:1–14.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, S. J. & CALDERÓN, O. 1995. Phylogenetic patterns among tropical flowering phenologies. Journal of Ecology 83:937–948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WRIGHT, S. J. & CALDERÓN, O. 2006. Seasonal, El Niño and longer term changes in flower and seed production in a moist tropical forest. Ecology Letters 9:35–44.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, S. J., CARRASCO, C., CALDERÓN, O. & PATON, S. 1999. The El Nino Southern Oscillation, variable fruit production, and famine in a tropical forest. Ecology 80:1632–1647.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, S. J., MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., CALDERÓN, O. & HERNANDEZ, A. 2005. Annual and spatial variation in seedfall and seedling recruitment in a neotropical forest. Ecology 86:848–860.Google Scholar
ZIMMERMAN, J. K., WRIGHT, S. J., CALDERÓN, O., PAGAN, M. A. & PATON, S. 2007. Flowering and fruiting phenologies of seasonal and aseasonal neotropical forests: the role of annual changes in irradiance. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23:231–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar