All species must balance their allocation to growth, survival and
recruitment. Among trees, evolution has resulted in different strategies
of partitioning resources to these key demographic processes, i.e.
demographic trade-offs. It is unclear whether the same demographic
trade-offs structure tropical forests worldwide. Here, we used data from
13 large-scale and long-term tropical forest plots to estimate the
principal trade-offs in growth, survival, recruitment, and tree stature
at each site. For ten sites, two trade-offs appeared repeatedly. One
trade-off showed a negative relationship between growth and survival,
i.e. the well-known fast−slow continuum. The second trade-off
distinguished between tall-statured species and species with high
recruitment rates, i.e. a stature−recruitment trade-off. Thus, the
fast-slow continuum and tree stature are two independent dimensions
structuring most tropical tree communities. Our discovery of the
consistency of demographic trade-offs and strategies across forest types
in three continents substantially improves our ability to predict
tropical forest dynamics worldwide.
Functional trait and community phylogenetic analyses reveal environmental filtering as the major determinant of assembly of tropical forest tree communities in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot in India
