Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:35:01.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intra- and interspecific variation in wood density and fine-scale spatial distribution of stand-level wood density in a northern Thai tropical montane forest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

Witchaphart Sungpalee ,
Akira Itoh ,
Mamoru Kanzaki ,
Kriangsak Sri-ngernyuang ,
Hideyuki Noguchi ,
Takashi Mizuno ,
Sakhan Teejuntuk ,
Masatoshi Hara ,
Kwanchai Chai-udom  and
Tatsuhiro Ohkubo
...Show all authors
Witchaphart Sungpalee*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
Akira Itoh
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
Mamoru Kanzaki
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
Kriangsak Sri-ngernyuang
Affiliation:
Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design, Maejo University, Chiang Mai 50290, Thailand
Hideyuki Noguchi
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
Takashi Mizuno
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
Sakhan Teejuntuk
Affiliation:
Faculty of Forestry, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand
Masatoshi Hara
Affiliation:
Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba, Chiba 260-8682, Japan
Kwanchai Chai-udom
Affiliation:
Faculty of Science and Technology, Thepsatri Rajabhat University, Lopburi 15000, Thailand
Tatsuhiro Ohkubo
Affiliation:
Faculty of Agriculture, Utsunomiya University, Utsunomiya 321-8505, Japan
Pongsak Sahunalu
Affiliation:
Faculty of Forestry, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand
Pricha Dhanmmanonda
Affiliation:
Faculty of Forestry, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand
Satoshi Nanami
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
Takuo Yamakura
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
Anan Sorn-ngai
Affiliation:
National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department, Bangkok 10900, Thailand
*
1Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Tropical tree wood density is often related to other species-specific functional traits, e.g. size, growth rate and mortality. We would therefore expect significant associations within tropical forests between the spatial distributions of stand-level wood density and micro-environments when interspecific variation in wood density is larger than intraspecific variation and when habitat-based species assembly is important in the forest. In this study, we used wood cores collected from 515 trees of 72 species in a 15-ha plot in northern Thailand to analyse intra- and interspecific variation in wood density and the spatial association of stand-level wood density. Intraspecific variation was lower than interspecific variation (20% vs. 80% of the total variation), indicating that species-specific differences in wood density, rather than phenotypic plasticity, are the major source of variation in wood density at the study site. Wood density of individual species was significantly negatively related to maximum diameter, growth rate of sapling diameter and mortality of saplings. Stand-level mean wood density was significantly negatively related to elevation, slope convexity, sapling growth rate and sapling mortality, and positively related to slope inclination. East-facing slopes had significantly lower stand-level mean wood densities than west-facing slopes. We hypothesized that ridges and east-facing slopes in the study forest experience strong and frequent wind disturbance, and that this severe impact may lead to faster stand turnover, creating conditions that favour fast-growing species with low wood density.

Keywords

Doi Inthanonreduced major axis regressionspatial associationThailandtropical montane forestwood specific gravity
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , July 2009 , pp. 359 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

LITERATURE CITED

CHAO, K. J., PHILLIPS, O. L., GLOOR, E., MONTEAGUDO, A., TORRES-LEZAMA, A. & MARTINEZ, R. V. 2008. Growth and wood density predict tree mortality in Amazon forests. Journal of Ecology 96:281–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CHAVE, J., CONDIT, R., AGUILAR, S., HERNANDEZ, A., LAO, S. & PEREZ, R. 2004. Error propagation and scaling for tropical forest biomass estimates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B Biological Science 359:409–420.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CHAVE, J., MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., BAKER, T. R., EASEDALE, T. A., TER STEEGE, H. & WEBB, C. O. 2006. Regional and phylogenetic variation of wood density across 2456 neotropical tree species. Ecological Application 16:2356–2367.Google Scholar
DAVIES, S. J., TAN, S., LAFRANKIE, J. V. & POTTS, M. D. 2005. Soil-related floristic variation in the hyperdiverse dipterocarp forest. Pp. 22–34 in Roubik, D. W., Sakai, S. & Hamid, A. A. (eds.). Pollination ecology and the rain forest (Sarawak Studies). Springer, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GUNATILLEKE, C. V. S., GUNATILLEKE, I. A. U. N., ESUFALI, S., HARMS, K. E., ASHTON, P. M. S., BURSLEM, D. F. R. P. & ASHTON, P. S. 2006. Species-habitat associations in a Sri Lankan dipterocarp forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 22:371–384.Google Scholar
HACKE, U. G. & SPERRY, J. S. 2001. Functional and ecological xylem anatomy. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 4:97–115.Google Scholar
HACKE, U. G., SPERRY, J. S., POCKMAN, W. T., DAVIS, S. D. & MCCULLOH, K. A. 2001. Trends in wood density and structure are linked to prevention of xylem implosion by negative pressure. Oecologia 126:457–461.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
HARA, M., KANZAKI, M., MIZUNO, T., NOGUCHI, H., SRI-NGERNYUANG, K., TREEJUNTUK, S., SUNGPALEE, C., OHKUBO, T., YAMAKURA, T., SAHUNALU, P., DHANMANONDA, P. & BUNYAVEJCHEWIN, S. 2002. The floristic composition of tropical montane forest in Doi Inthanon National Park, Northern Thailand, with special reference to its phytogeographical relation with montane forests in tropical Asia. Natural History Research 7:1–17.Google Scholar
HARMS, K. E., CONDIT, R., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 2001. Habitat association of trees and shrubs in a 50-ha neotropical forest plot. Journal of Ecology 89:947–959.Google Scholar
ITOH, A., YAMAKURA, T., OHKUBO, T., KANZAKI, M., PALMIOTTO, P. A., LAFRANKIE, J. V., ASHTON, P. S. & LEE, H. S. 2003. Importance of topography and soil texture in the spatial distribution of two sympatric dipterocarp trees in a Bornean rainforest. Ecological Research 18:307–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
JOHN, R., DALLING, J, W., HARMS, K. E., YAVITT, J. B., STALLARD, R. F., MIRABELLO, M., HUBBELL, S. P., VALENCIA, R., NAVARETTE, H., VALLEJO, M. & FOSTER, R. B. 2007. Soil nutrients influence spatial distributions of tropical tree species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:864–869.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
KANZAKI, M., HARA, M., YAMAKURA, T., OHKOBO, T., TAMURA, M. N., SRI-NGERNYUANG, K., TEEJUNTUK, S. & BUNYAVEJCHEWIN, S. 2004. Doi Inthanon forest dynamics plot, Thailand. Pp. 474–480 in Losos, E. C. & Leigh, E. G. (eds.). Tropical forest diversity and dynamism: findings from a large-scale plot network. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
KING, D. A., DAVIES, S. J., NUR SUPARDI, M. N. & TAN, S. 2005. Tree growth is related to light interception and wood density in two mixed dipterocarp forests of Malaysia. Functional Ecology 19:445–453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KOUBAA, A., ZHANG, S. Y., ISABEL, N., BEAULIEU, J. & BOUSQUET, J. 2001. Phenotypic correlations between juvenile-mature wood density and growth in black spruce. Wood and Fibre Science 32:61–71.Google Scholar
KRAFT, N. J. B., VALENCIA, R. & ACKERLY, D. D. 2008. Functional traits and niche-based tree community assembly in an Amazonian forest. Science 322:580–582.Google Scholar
KUBO, T., KOHYAMA, T., POTTS, M. D. & ASHTON, P. S. 2000. Mortality rate estimation when inter-census intervals vary. Journal of Tropical Ecology 16:753–756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LAWTON, R. O. 1984. Ecological constraints on wood density in a tropical montane rain-forest. American Journal of Botany 71:261–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MULLER-LANDAU, H. C. 2004. Interspecific and inter-site variation in wood specific gravity of tropical trees. Biotropica 36:20–32.Google Scholar
NOGUCHI, H., ITOH, A., MIZUNO, T., SRI-NGERNYUANG, K., KANZAKI, M., TEEJUNTUK, S., SUNGPALEE, W., HARA, M., OHKUBO, T., SAHUNALU, P., DHANMMANONDA, P. & YAMAKURA, T. 2007. Habitat divergence in sympatric Fagaceae tree species of a tropical montane forest in northern Thailand. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23:549–558.Google Scholar
OSUNKOYA, O. O., SHENG, T. K., MAHUD, N. & DAMIT, N. 2007. Variation in wood density, wood water content, stem growth and mortality among twenty-seven tree species in a tropical rainforest on Borneo Island. Austral Ecology 32:191–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PAOLI, G. D., CURRAN, L. M. & SLIK, J. W. F. 2008. Soil nutrients affect spatial patterns of aboveground biomass and emergent tree density in southwestern Borneo. Oecologia 155:287–299.Google Scholar
PENDLETON, L. 1962. Thailand; aspects of landscape and life. Duell Sloan and Pearce, New York. 330 pp.Google Scholar
SANTISUK, T. 1988. An account of the vegetation of northern Thailand. Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, Stuttgart. 101 pp.Google Scholar
SHEIL, D., BURSLEM, D. F. P. & ALDER, D. 1995. The interpretation and misinterpretation of mortality rate measures. Journal of Ecology 83:331–333.Google Scholar
SLIK, J. W. 2006. Estimating species-specific wood density from the genus average in Indonesian trees. Journal of Tropical Ecology 22:481–482.Google Scholar
SOKAL, R. R. & ROHLF, F. J. 1995. Biometry: the principles and practice of statistics in biological research. (Third edition). Freeman, New York. 880 pp.Google Scholar
SRI-NGERNYUANG, K., KANZAKI, M., MIZUNO, T., NOGUCHI, H., TREEJUNTUK, S., SUNGPALEE, C., HARA, M., OHKUBO, T., YAMAKURA, T., SAHUNALU, P., DHANMANONDA, P. & BUNYAVEJCHEWIN, S. 2003. Habitat differentiation of Lauraceae species in a tropical lower montane forest in northern Thailand. Ecological Research 18:1–14.Google Scholar
SUZUKI, E. 1999. Diversity in specific gravity and water content of wood among Bornean tropical rain forest trees. Ecological Research 14:211–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SWENSON, N. G. & ENQUIST, B. J. 2007. Ecological and evolutionary determinants of a key plant functional trait: wood density and its community-wide variation across latitude and elevation. American Journal of Botany 94:451–459.Google Scholar
TEEJUNTUK, S., SAHUNALU, P., SAKURAI, K. & SUNGPALEE, W. 2002. Forest structure and tree species diversity along an altitudinal gradient in Doi Inthanon national park, northern Thailand. Tropics 12:85–102.Google Scholar
VAN GELDER, H. A., POORTER, L. & STERCK, F. J. 2006. Wood mechanics, allometry, and life-history variation in a tropical rain forest tree community. New Phytologist 171:367–378.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, I. J., ACKERLY, D. D., BONGERS, F., HARMS, K. E., IBARRA-MANRIQUEZ, G., MARTINEZ-RAMOS, M., MAZER, S. J., MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., PAZ, H., PITMAN, N. C. A., POORTER, L., SILMAN, M. R., VRIESENDORP, C. F., WEBB, C. O., WESTOBY, M. & WRIGHT, S. J. 2007. Relationships among ecologically important dimensions of plant trait variation in seven neotropical forests. Annals of Botany 99:1003–1015.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
WRIGHT, S. J., MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., CONDIT, R. & HUBBELL, S. P. 2003. Gap-dependent recruitment, realized vital rates, and size distributions of tropical trees. Ecology 84:3174–3185.Google Scholar
YAMAKURA, T., KANZAKI, M., ITOH, A., OHKUBO, T., OGINO, K., CHAI, E. O. K., LEE, H. S. & ASHTON, P. S. 1995. Topography of a large-scale research plot established within a tropical rain forest at Lambir, Sarawak. Tropics 5:41–56.Google Scholar