Coexistence and relative abundance in forest trees

Contemporary acceleration of biodiversity loss makes increasingly urgent the need to understand the controls of species coexistence. Tree diversity in particular plays a pivotal role in determining terrestrial biodiversity, through maintaining diversity of its dependent species and with them, their...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2002-05, Vol.417 (6887), p.437-440
Main Authors: KELLY, Colleen K, BOWLER, Michael G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Biodiversity
Biodiversity loss
Biological and medical sciences
Coexistence
Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife
Ecosystem
Forests
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Mexico
Models, Biological
Parasites
Parks, reserves, wildlife conservation. Endangered species: population survey and restocking
Plant diversity
Plant species
Population Density
Predators
Relative abundance
Species diversity
Species Specificity
Synecology
Terrestrial ecosystems
Trees
Trees - growth & development
Trees - physiology
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Summary:Contemporary acceleration of biodiversity loss makes increasingly urgent the need to understand the controls of species coexistence. Tree diversity in particular plays a pivotal role in determining terrestrial biodiversity, through maintaining diversity of its dependent species and with them, their predators and parasites. Most theories of coexistence based on the principle of limiting similarity suggest that coexistence of competing species is inherently unstable; coexistence of competitors must be maintained by external forces such as disturbance, immigration or 'patchiness' of resources in space and time. In contrast, storage theory postulates stable coexistence of competing species through temporal alternation of conditions favouring recruitment of one species over the other. Here we use storage theory to develop explicit predictions for relative differences between competitors that allow us to discriminate between coexistence models. Data on tree species from a primary forest on the Mexican Pacific coast support a general dynamic of storage processes determining coexistence of similar tree species in this community, and allow us to reject all other theories of coexistence.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/417437a