Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:17:32.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forest dynamics of a subtropical monsoon forest in Dinghushan, China: recruitment, mortality and the pace of community change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2013

Yong Shen ,
Louis S. Santiago ,
Lei Ma ,
Guo-Jun Lin ,
Ju-Yu Lian ,
Hong-Lin Cao  and
Wan-Hui Ye
Yong Shen
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Louis S. Santiago
Affiliation:
Botany and Plant Sciences Department, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Ancon, Panama, Republic of Panama
Lei Ma
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Guo-Jun Lin
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Ju-Yu Lian
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
Hong-Lin Cao
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
Wan-Hui Ye*
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, PR China
*
1Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Structure and demographics in many tropical forests is changing, but the causes of these changes remain unclear. We studied 5 y (2005–2010) of species turnover, recruitment, mortality and population change data from a 20-ha subtropical forest plot in Dinghushan, China, to identify trends in forest change, and to test whether tree mortality is associated with intraspecific or interspecific competition. We found the Dinghushan forest to be more dynamic than one temperate and two tropical forests in a comparison of large, long-term forest dynamics plots. Within Dinghushan, size-class distributions were bell-shaped only for the three most dominant species and reverse J-shaped for other species. Bell-shaped population distributions can indicate a population in decline, but our data suggest that these large and long-lived species are not in decline because the pattern is driven by increasing probabilities of transition to larger size class with increasing size and fast growth in saplings. Spatially aggregated tree species distributions were common for surviving and dead individuals. Competitive associations were more frequently intraspecific than interspecific. The competition that induced tree mortality was more associated with intraspecific than interspecific interactions. Intraspecific competitive exclusion and density-dependence appear to play important roles in tree mortality in this subtropical forest.

Keywords

forest dynamicspopulation trendssize-class distributionsspatial patternssubtropical foresttree mortality
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 131 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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

BAROT, S., GIGNOUX, J. & MENAUT, J. C. 1999. Demography of a savanna palm tree: predictions from comprehensive spatial pattern analyses. Ecology 80:1987–2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BELLINGHAM, P. J. & TANNER, E. V. J. 2000. The influence of topography on tree growth, mortality, and recruitment in a tropical montane forest. Biotropica 32:378–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BIN, Y., LIAN, J., WANG, Z., YE, W. & CAO, H. 2011. Tree mortality and recruitment in a subtropical broadleaved monsoon forest in South China. Journal of Tropical Forest Science 23:57–66.Google Scholar
BOTHA, J., WITKOWSKI, E. T. F. & SHACKLETON, C. M. 2004. The impact of commercial harvesting on Warburgia salutaris (‘pepper-bark tree’) in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Biodiversity and Conservation 13:1675–1698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BOYDEN, S., BINKLEY, D. & SHEPPERD, W. 2005. Spatial and temporal patterns in structure, regeneration, and mortality of an old-growth ponderosa pine forest in the Colorado Front Range. Forest Ecology and Management 219:43–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BURKEY, T. V. 1994. Tropical tree species-diversity – a test of the Janzen–Connell model. Oecologia 97:533–540.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CALLAWAY, R. M. & WALKER, L. R. 1997. Competition and facilitation: a synthetic approach to interactions in plant communities. Ecology 78:1958–1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CASWELL, H., 1989. Matrix Population Models: Construction, Analysis and Interpretation. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.Google Scholar
CHESSON, P. 2000. General theory of competitive coexistence in spatially-varying environments. Theoretical Population Biology 58:211–237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CONDIT, R., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 1993. Mortality and growth of a commercial hardwood El Cativo, Prioria copaifera, in Panama. Forest Ecology and Management 62:107–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CONDIT, R., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 1995. Mortality-rates of 205 neotropical tree and shrub species and the impact of a severe drought. Ecological Monographs 65:419–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CONDIT, R., SUKUMAR, R., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 1998. Predicting population trends from size distributions: a direct test in a tropical tree community. American Naturalist 152:495–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CONDIT, R., ASHTON, P. S., MANOKARAN, N., LAFRANKIE, J. V., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 1999. Dynamics of the forest communities at Pasoh and Barro Colorado: comparing two 50-ha plots. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B–Biological Sciences 354:1739–1748.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DAS, A., BATTLES, J., VAN MANTGEM, P. J. & STEPHENSON, N. L. 2008. Spatial elements of mortality risk in old-growth forests. Ecology 89:1744–1756.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DE LA CRUZ, M., ROMAO, R. L., ESCUDERO, A. & MAESTRE, F. T. 2008. Where do seedlings go? A spatio-temporal analysis of seedling mortality in a semi-arid gypsophyte. Ecography 31:720–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DHILLION, S. S. & GUSTAD, G. 2004. Local management practices influence the viability of the baobab (Adansonia digitata Linn.) in different land use types, Cinzana, Mali. Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment 101:85–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
FEELEY, K. J., DAVIES, S. J., PEREZ, R., HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 2011. Directional changes in the species composition of a tropical forest. Ecology 92:871–882.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
FLORES, J. & JURADO, E. 2003. Are nurse–protege interactions more common among plants from arid environments? Journal of Vegetation Science 14:911–916.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GAINES, S. D. & DENNY, M. W. 1993. The largest, smallest, highest, lowest, longest, and shortest – extremes in ecology. Ecology 74:1677–1692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HUBBELL, S. P. & FOSTER, R. B. 1992. Short-term dynamics of a neotropical forest – why ecological research matters to tropical conservation and management. Oikos 63:48–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
JANZEN, D. H. 1970. Herbivores and the number of tree species in tropical forests. American Naturalist 104:501–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LAURANCE, W. F., USECHE, D. C., RENDEIRO, J., KALKA, M., BRADSHAW, C. J. A., SLOAN, S. P., LAURANCE, S. G., CAMPBELL, M., ABERNETHY, K., ALVAREZ, P.et al. 2012. Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas. Nature 489:290–294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LEWIS, S. L., PHILLIPS, O. L., SHEIL, D., VINCETI, B., BAKER, T. R., BROWN, S., GRAHAM, A. W., HIGUCHI, N., HILBERT, D. W., LAURANCE, W. F.et al. 2004. Tropical forest tree mortality, recruitment and turnover rates: calculation, interpretation and comparison when census intervals vary. Journal of Ecology 92:929–944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LI, L., HUANG, Z. L., YE, W. H., CAO, H. L., WEI, S. G., WANG, Z. G., LIAN, J. Y., SUN, I. F., MA, K. P. & HE, F. L. 2009. Spatial distributions of tree species in a subtropical forest of China. Oikos 118:495–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MANOKARAN, N. & KOCHUMMEN, K. M. 1987. Recruitment, growth and mortality of tree species in a lowland dipterocarp forest in peninsular Malaysia. Journal of Tropical Ecology 3:315–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NATHAN, R. & CASAGRANDI, R. 2004. A simple mechanistic model of seed dispersal, predation and plant establishment: Janzen–Connell and beyond. Journal of Ecology 92:733–746.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PETERS, H. A. 2003. Neighbour-regulated mortality: the influence of positive and negative density dependence on tree populations in species-rich tropical forests. Ecology Letters 6:757–765.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
RIPLEY, B. D. 1977. Modeling spatial patterns. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B–Methodological 39:172–212.Google Scholar
RÜGER, N., HUTH, A., HUBBELL, S. P. & CONDIT, R. 2011. Determinants of mortality across a tropical lowland rainforest community. Oikos 120:1047–1056.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SHEIL, D., BURSLEM, D. F. R. P. & ALDER, D. 1995. The interpretation and misinterpretation of mortality-rate measures. Journal of Ecology 83:331–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SHEIL, D., JENNINGS, S. & SAVILL, P. 2000. Long-term permanent plot observations of vegetation dynamics in Budongo, a Ugandan rain forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 16:765–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TILMAN, D. 1994. Competition and biodiversity in spatially structured habitats. Ecology 75:2–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
VENTER, S. M. & WITKOWSKI, E. T. F. 2010. Baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) density, size-class distribution and population trends between four land-use types in northern Venda, South Africa. Forest Ecology and Management 259:294–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WANG, L., LI, B., YE, J., BAI, X., YUAN, Z., XING, D., LIN, F., SHI, S., WANG, X. & HAO, Z. 2011. Dynamics of short-term tree mortality in broad-leaved Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) mixed forest in the Changbai Mountains. Biodiversity Science (Chinese Version):260–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WANG, X. G., WIEGAND, T., HAO, Z. Q., LI, B. H., YE, J. & LIN, F. 2010. Species associations in an old-growth temperate forest in north-eastern China. Journal of Ecology 98:674–686.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WANG, Z., YE, W. H., CAO, H. L., HUANG, Z. L., LIAN, J. Y., LI, L., WEI, S. G. & SUN, I. F. 2009. Species-topography association in a species-rich subtropical forest of China. Basic and Applied Ecology 10:648–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WIEGAND, K., WARD, D., THULKE, H. H. & JELTSCH, F. 2000. From snapshot information to long-term population dynamics of Acacias by a simulation model. Plant Ecology 150:97–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WIEGAND, T., MARTINEZ, I. & HUTH, A. 2009. Recruitment in tropical tree species: revealing complex spatial patterns. American Naturalist 174:E106–E140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
YE, W., CAO, H., HUANG, Z., LIAN, J., WANG, Z., LI, L., WEI, S. & WANG, Z. 2008. Community structure of a 20 ha lower subtropical evergreen broadleaved forest plot in Dinghushan, China. Journal of Plant Ecology (Chinese Version):274–286.Google Scholar