Beta-Diversity in Tropical Forests

Beta-Diversity in Tropical Forests

Condit et al. (1) and Duivenvoorden et al. (2) discussed beta-diversity of tropical rainforest trees and came to some conclusions that we find problematic. Condit et al. argued that betadiversity of lowland rainforest trees is higher in Panama than in western Amazonia, based on observation of a steeper distance-decay of floristic similarity in 34 Panamanian tree plots compared with 16 Ecuadoria...

Nonrandom processes maintain diversity in tropical forests.

An ecological community's species diversity tends to erode through time as a result of stochastic extinction, competitive exclusion, and unstable host-enemy dynamics. This erosion of diversity can be prevented over the short term if recruits are highly diverse as a result of preferential recruitment of rare species or, alternatively, if rare species survive preferentially, which increases diver...

Predicting species diversity in tropical forests.

A fundamental question in ecology is how many species occur within a given area. Despite the complexity and diversity of different ecosystems, there exists a surprisingly simple, approximate answer: the number of species is proportional to the size of the area raised to some exponent. The exponent often turns out to be roughly 1/4. This power law can be derived from assumptions about the relati...

Beta diversity of angiosperms in the tropical forests of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, India

The paper aims to evaluate the beta diversity in homogeneous and heterogeneous habitats in tropical forests. Also, the relationship between beta diversity and richness in the rain forests and monsoon forests is elucidated. The study was conducted in a forest landscape of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in the Western Ghats of India. The Wilson and Shmida index was used to assess the beta diversity of...

Explorer Bridging the gap between plant hydraulics and beta diversity in tropical forests