Publication Date:
1999-01-23
Description:
Light gap disturbances have been postulated to play a major role in maintaining tree diversity in species-rich tropical forests. This hypothesis was tested in more than 1200 gaps in a tropical forest in Panama over a 13-year period. Gaps increased seedling establishment and sapling densities, but this effect was nonspecific and broad-spectrum, and species richness per stem was identical in gaps and in nongap control sites. Spatial and temporal variation in the gap disturbance regime did not explain variation in species richness. The species composition of gaps was unpredictable even for pioneer tree species. Strong recruitment limitation appears to decouple the gap disturbance regime from control of tree diversity in this tropical forest.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hubbell -- Foster -- O'Brien -- Harms -- Condit -- Wechsler -- Wright -- de Lao SL -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1999 Jan 22;283(5401):554-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉S. P. Hubbell, S. T. O'Brien, B. Wechsler, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. R. B. Foster, K. E. Harms, R. Condit, S. J. Wright, S. Loo de Lao, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Post.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9915706" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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