Hurricane-related winds are a major source of disturbance in coastal ecosystems of the southern United States, but their effects on forests in the southern Appalachian Mountains, >400 km inland, have seldom been documented. In October 1995, remnant winds of Hurricane Opal caused windthrow of individual and patches of trees throughout the mountainous region of western North Carolina, USA. The 2-...

Questions: What are the effects of soil, topography, treefall gaps, tree species composition, and tree density on liana species composition and total liana abundance? Location: A 6-ha permanent plot in a subtropical montane forest in northwest Argentina. Methods:Multiple regressions were used to quantify associations of liana species composition and total liana abundance with edaphic, disturban...

The influence of treefall gaps and coarse woody debris (CWD) on white-footed mouse (Peromyxus 1eucopu.s) abundance was tested experimentally during 1996-1999 in a southern Appalachian hardwood forest. I compared the relative abundance and body size of F! leucopus among unsalvaged gaps that were created by wind disturbance and retained high CWD levels, salvage logged gaps where fallen and damage...

Treefall gaps are hypothesized to maintain diversity by creating resource-rich, heterogeneous habitats necessary for species coexistence. This hypothesis, however, is not supported empirically for shade-tolerant trees, the dominant plant group in tropical forests. The failure of gaps to maintain shade-tolerant trees remains puzzling, and the hypothesis implicated to date is dispersal limitation...

Here we describe the seed shadow, seedling recruitment, ontogenetic structure and spatial distribution of Buchenavia capitata (an emergent canopy tree) in a 380-ha fragment of the Atlantic forest in northeast Brazil. In particular, we examine seed distribution around 10 parental trees and both seedling recruitment and mortality, during an 18 month period beneath and around parental trees. Moreo...

Dispersal is thought to be a key process underlying the high spatial diversity of tropical forests. Just how important dispersal is in structuring plant communities is nevertheless an open question because it is very difficult to isolate dispersal from other processes, and thereby measure its effect. Using a unique situation, the loss of vertebrate seed dispersers on the island of Guam and thei...

The "intermediate disturbance hypothesis," which postulates maximum diversity at intermediate regimes of disturbance, has never been clearly proved to apply to species-rich tropical forest tree communities and to local-scale canopy disturbances that modify light environments. This hypothesis was tested on a sample of 17,000 trees in a Guianan forest, 10 years after a silvicultural experiment th...