Site‐specific impacts of a major hurricane on alpha and beta diversity in tropical forest seedling communities

Large scale disturbances are known to impact the alpha and beta diversity of communities. However, whether these increase or decrease is often debated. The goal this study was quantify how seedling community impacted within across elevation in El Yunque forest Puerto Rico following a major hurricane. We tested two alternative hypotheses, that hurricanes relatively more homogenizing non-homogenizing forces, by quantifying changes post-hurricane. This approach highlights ecological mechanisms associated with homogenization (species-specific survival, successional processes, reduced environmental heterogeneity) non-homogenization (resource release, increased heterogeneity, stochastic processes) structure compared species richness, Fisher’s α, Simpson’s evenness, multiple aspects among 25 plots at 300, 400, 500 m pre- found diversity, evenness were higher post-hurricane, but abundance decreased 19%. Increases suggest forces potentially linked increases light levels promoting colonization early-successional resource release for other light-demanding species. results varied their support as depending upon spatial analysis, due combination including species-specific survival site-specific differences. To fully grasp responds recovers from disturbance, additional long-term monitoring will be needed allow insight into future abundance, temporal composition.