Does soil determine the boundaries of monodominant rain forest with adjacent mixed rain forest and maquis on ultramafic soils in New Caledonia?
نویسندگان
چکیده
Within-stand species richness of tropical rain forests is typically high, so that it is not unusual for more than 200 species, including more than 100 tree species, to coexist within 1 ha of tropical rain forest (Whitmore, 1984; Gentry, 1988). However, not all tropical forests have high species richness. Forests growing in suboptimal environments can have reduced richness of higher plants, sometimes with a canopy dominated by a single species (monodominance) (Connell & Lowman, 1989; Hart, 1990). Even in species-rich rain forests, high richness does not always extend to all strata (e.g. Whitmore, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia, IRD – Laboratoire de Botanique et d’Écologie Végétale Appliquée, Institut de recherche pour le développement, Centre de Nouméa, New Caledonia, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Menai, NSW, Australia, and Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
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Soil Does Not Explain Monodominance in a Central African Tropical Forest
BACKGROUND Soil characteristics have been hypothesised as one of the possible mechanisms leading to monodominance of Gilbertiodendron dewerei in some areas of Central Africa where higher-diversity forest would be expected. However, the differences in soil characteristics between the G. dewevrei-dominated forest and its adjacent mixed forest are still poorly understood. Here we present the soil ...
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