Secondary succession of a seasonally dry tropical forest is taxonomically stochastic but functionally deterministic

作者：Anna Gee, Leland K. Werden, Oscar E. Verduzco-Salazar, Ruiming Nie, Bonnie G. Waring · 发表于：Forest Ecology and Management · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.foreco.2025.123184 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change

Secondary forests that naturally grow on abandoned agricultural land are an increasingly widespread ecosystem type. The taxonomic and functional composition of these forests is determined by community assembly processes acting during secondary succession. We used large-scale surveys of the tree community at three ontogenetic stages (seed, juvenile, and adult) along a successional chronosequence to explore the assembly processes in a naturally regenerating tropical dry forest in Mexico. We found that the functional composition of tree communities converged during succession, and that major changes in functional profiles took place during recruitment of juveniles. Recruitment limitation was strong and pervasive during both dispersal and establishment (observed dispersal limitation ranged from 0.08 – 0.96 and observed establishment limitation ranged from 0.77 – 1.00). However, variation in recruitment limitation was not explained by species’ functional traits, but rather by the abundance of conspecific individuals at the same ontogenetic stage. Our results suggest that secondary succession leads to consistent changes to the environment experienced by juvenile trees over time, such that the functional traits of the whole tree community are predictable. This pattern is only detected at larger spatial scales, while analyses that focus on smaller spatial scales highlight the importance of density-dependent processes for tree recruitment. Most studies of successional chronosequences ...