Muller-Landau, Helene C. ; Condit, Richard S. ; Harms, Kyle E. ; Marks, Christian O. ; Thomas, Sean C. ; Bunyavejchewin, Sarayudh ; Chuyong, George ; Co, Leonardo ; Davies, Stuart ; Foster, Robin ; Gunatilleke, Savitri ; Gunatilleke, Nimal ; Har, Terese ; Hubbell, Stephen P. ; Itoh, Akira ; Kassim, Abd Rahman ; Kenfack, David ; LaFrankie, James V. ; Lagunzad, Daniel ; Lee, Hua Seng ; Losos, Elizabeth ; Makana, Jean-Remy ; Ohkubo, Tatsuhiro ; Sampe, Cristian ; Sukumar, Raman ; Sun, I-Fang ; Supardi, M. N. Nur ; Tan, Sylvester ; Thomas, Duncan ; Thompson, Jill ; Valencia, Renato ; Vallejo, Martha Isabel ; Munoz, Gorky Villa ; Yamakura, Takuo ; Zimmerman, Jess K. ; Dattaraja, Handanakere Shavaramaiah ; Esufali, Shameema ; Hall, Pamela ; He, Fangliang ; Hernandez, Consuelo ; Kiratiprayoon, Somboon ; Suresh, Hebbalalu S. ; Wills, Christopher ; Ashton, Peter (2006) Comparing tropical forest tree size distributions with the predictions of metabolic ecology and equilibrium models Ecology Letters, 9 (5). pp. 589-602. ISSN 1461-023X
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Official URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-...
Related URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00915.x
Abstract
Tropical forests vary substantially in the densities of trees of different sizes and thus in above-ground biomass and carbon stores. However, these tree size distributions show fundamental similarities suggestive of underlying general principles. The theory of metabolic ecology predicts that tree abundances will scale as the −2 power of diameter. Demographic equilibrium theory explains tree abundances in terms of the scaling of growth and mortality. We use demographic equilibrium theory to derive analytic predictions for tree size distributions corresponding to different growth and mortality functions. We test both sets of predictions using data from 14 large-scale tropical forest plots encompassing censuses of 473 ha and > 2 million trees. The data are uniformly inconsistent with the predictions of metabolic ecology. In most forests, size distributions are much closer to the predictions of demographic equilibrium, and thus, intersite variation in size distributions is explained partly by intersite variation in growth and mortality.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Source: | Copyright of this article belongs to John Wiley and Sons. |
| Keywords: | Demographic Rates; Forest Structure; Large-scale Disturbance; Metabolic Theory of Ecology; Old-growth Forests; Tree Diameter Distributions |
| ID Code: | 51917 |
| Deposited On: | 01 Aug 2011 07:46 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2011 07:46 |
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