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The importance of demographic niches to tree diversity

Abstract:

Most ecological hypotheses about species coexistence hinge on species differences, but quantifying trait differences across species in diverse communities is often unfeasible. We examined the variation of demographic traits using a global tropical forest data set covering 4500 species in 10 large-scale tree inventories. With a hierarchical Bayesian approach, we quantified the distribution Of mortality and growth rates of all tree species at each site. This allowed us to test the pbkp_rediction that demographic differences facilitate species richness, as suggested by the theory that a tradeoff between high growth and high survival allows species to coexist. Contrary to the pbkp_rediction, the most diverse forests had the least demographic variation. Although demographic differences may foster coexistence, they do not explain any of the 16-fold variation in tree species richness observed across the tropics.