spatial distribution and interspecific associations of tree species in a tropical seasonal rain forest of china空间分布和种间关联的中国热带季节雨林树种.pdfVIP

Spatial Distribution and Interspecific Associations of Tree Species in a Tropical Seasonal Rain Forest of China 1,2 3 3 1 2 1 1 Guoyu Lan , Stephan Getzin , Thorsten Wiegand , Yuehua Hu , Guishui Xie , Hua Zhu , Min Cao * 1 Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, P. R. China, 2 Rubber Research Institute, The Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, Danzhou City, Hainan Province, P. R. China, 3 Department of Ecological Modelling, UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany Abstract Studying the spatial pattern and interspecific associations of plant species may provide valuable insights into processes and mechanisms that maintain species coexistence. Point pattern analysis was used to analyze the spatial distribution patterns of twenty dominant tree species, their interspecific spatial associations and changes across life stages in a 20-ha permanent plot of seasonal tropical rainforest in Xishuangbanna, China, to test mechanisms maintaining species coexistence. Torus- translation tests were used to quantify positive or negative associations of the species to topographic habitats. The results showed: (1) fourteen of the twenty tree species were negatively (or positively) associated with one or two of the topographic variables, which evidences that the niche contributes to the spatial pattern of these species. (2) Most saplings of the study species showed a significantly clumped distribution at small scales (0–10 m) which was lost at larger scales (10– 30 m). (3) The degree of spatial clumping deceases from saplings, to poles, to adults indicates that density-de