ARE FUNCTIONAL TRAITS GOOD PREDICTORS OF DEMOGRAPHIC RATES? EVIDENCE FROM FIVE NEOTROPICAL FORESTS

作者：Lourens Poorter, S. Joseph Wright‬, Horacio Paz, David D. Ackerly, Richard Condit, Guillermo Ibarra‐Manríquez, Kyle E. Harms, Juan Carlos Licona, Miguel Martı́nez-Ramos, Susan J. Mazer, Helene C. Muller‐Landau, M. Peña-Claros, Campbell O. Webb, Ian J. Wright · 发表于：Ecology · 年份：2008 · DOI：10.1890/07-0207.1 · 被引用次数：767 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Forest ecology and management、African Botany and Ecology Studies

A central goal of comparative plant ecology is to understand how functional traits vary among species and to what extent this variation has adaptive value. Here we evaluate relationships between four functional traits (seed volume, specific leaf area, wood density, and adult stature) and two demographic attributes (diameter growth and tree mortality) for large trees of 240 tree species from five Neotropical forests. We evaluate how these key functional traits are related to survival and growth and whether similar relationships between traits and demography hold across different tropical forests. There was a tendency for a trade-off between growth and survival across rain forest tree species. Wood density, seed volume, and adult stature were significant predictors of growth and/or mortality. Both growth and mortality rates declined with an increase in wood density. This is consistent with greater construction costs and greater resistance to stem damage for denser wood. Growth and mortality rates also declined as seed volume increased. This is consistent with an adaptive syndrome in which species tolerant of low resource availability (in this case shade-tolerant species) have large seeds to establish successfully and low inherent growth and mortality rates. Growth increased and mortality decreased with an increase in adult stature, because taller species have a greater access to light and longer life spans. Specific leaf area was, surprisingly, only modestly informative for the...