Incomplete recovery of tree community composition and rare species after 120 years of tropical forest succession in Panama
Incomplete recovery of tree community composition and rare species after 120 years of tropical forest succession in Panama
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DOI：
10.1111/btp.13275
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发表时间：
2023-10
期刊：
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Alexander D. Elsy;Marion Pfeifer;Isabel L. Jones;S. DeWalt;Omar R. Lopez;D. Dent
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Alexander D. Elsy;Marion Pfeifer;Isabel L. Jones;S. DeWalt;Omar R. Lopez;D. Dent
确定废弃土地上的热带森林如何完全恢复原生林的特征，对于了解它们在保护珍稀物种和维持生态系统服务方面的作用越来越重要。尽管如此，我们对整个演替过程中森林结构和群落组成恢复的理解是不完整的，因为许多热带时间序列并不超过演替的前50年。在这里，我们研究了位于巴拿马巴罗科罗拉多自然纪念碑（BCNM）的森林演替中后期（40-120年）的8个1公顷样地和5个1公顷旧生长样地的森林恢复轨迹。我们首先验证了森林年龄比土壤或地形变化对森林结构、多样性和组成的影响更大，然后验证了20年前小样本普查的结果。树种多样性（不包括物种丰富度）和森林结构分别在40年和90年时完全恢复到原始生长水平。然而，在中后期次生林样地，稀有物种缺失，老生长专家丰度低，导致物种组成在演替后120年仍未完全恢复。我们还发现，长期拓荒者在演替过程中的早期优势导致了森林结构的改变，并延迟了物种多样性和组成在土地被遗弃后一个多世纪的恢复。我们的研究结果表明，考虑到群落组成的恢复可能需要几个世纪的时间，特别是当一个长寿的先驱在早期演替中占主导地位时，原始生长林和原始次生林对生物多样性保护至关重要。
Determining how fully tropical forests regenerating on abandoned land recover characteristics of old‐growth forests is increasingly important for understanding their role in conserving rare species and maintaining ecosystem services. Despite this, our understanding of forest structure and community composition recovery throughout succession is incomplete, as many tropical chronosequences do not extend beyond the first 50 years of succession. Here, we examined trajectories of forest recovery across eight 1‐hectare plots in middle and later stages of forest succession (40–120 years) and five 1‐hectare old‐growth plots, in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument (BCNM), Panama. We first verified that forest age had a greater effect than edaphic or topographic variation on forest structure, diversity and composition and then corroborated results from smaller plots censused 20 years previously. Tree species diversity (but not species richness) and forest structure had fully recovered to old‐growth levels by 40 and 90 years, respectively. However, rare species were missing, and old‐growth specialists were in low abundance, in the mid‐ and late secondary forest plots, leading to incomplete recovery of species composition even by 120 years into succession. We also found evidence that dominance early in succession by a long‐lived pioneer led to altered forest structure and delayed recovery of species diversity and composition well past a century after land abandonment. Our results illustrate the critical importance of old‐growth and old secondary forests for biodiversity conservation, given that recovery of community composition may take several centuries, particularly when a long‐lived pioneer dominates in early succession.