The Dynamics of a Neotropical Forest: the 2005 Recensus and the Annual Seedling and Small Sapling Census

摘要巴罗科罗拉多岛(BCI)森林动力学项目(FDP)是世界上对物种丰富的热带森林进行的持续时间最长的大规模研究。该项目的建立是为了在整个树木群落层面上测试相互竞争的理论，以维持热带潮湿森林中的树木物种多样性。BCI FDP是自1980年以来在新旧世界热带地区建立的类似地块全球网络的旗舰项目和模式。这是一项建议，在2005年对BCI上的50公顷土地进行第六次全面普查，将研究延长到25年。第六次普查的目标是更新自5年前进行的上一次普查以来所有茎直径为1厘米的非藤本植物(约24万株)的更新、生长和存活的数据，并分析每个树种的种群趋势。大多数热带树种，包括那些在BCI上的，都是相当罕见的，这项研究正在产生关于热带树种如何在罕见的情况下如何生存的基本见解。这项努力将为几个不同国家的研究生和本科生提供培训，将利用一群巴拿马植物学家，并向他们支付“生活”工资。这些数据将在科学文献和非科学文献中广泛传播，并将被添加到通过热带森林研究中心公开提供的庞大且不断增长的数据库中。这些结果对于制定物种丰富的热带森林的生态保护和管理战略具有重要意义。

ABSTRACT The Barro Colorado Island (BCI) Forest Dynamics Project (FDP) is the longest running large-scale study in the world of a species-rich tropical forest. The project was established to test competing theories at the whole tree community level for the maintenance of tree species diversity in tropical moist forests. The BCI FDP is the flagship project and model for a global network of similar plots established since 1980 throughout the New and Old World tropics. This is a proposal to conduct the sixth complete census of the 50 ha plot on BCI in the year 2005, extending the study to 25 years. The objectives of the sixth census are to update the data on recruitment, growth, and survival of all the non-liana woody plants whose stem diameter is = 1 cm (about 240,000 plants) since the last census done 5 years ago and to analyze the population trends of each tree species. Most tropical tree species, including those on BCI, are quite rare, and this study is yielding fundamental insights about how tropical tree species manage to persist, despite being rare. The effort would provide training for a number of graduate and undergraduate students in several different countries, will utilize a group of Panamanian botanists, and pay them a "living" wage. The data will be broadly disseminated in both the scientific and lay literature and will be added to a massive and growing database publicly available through the Center for Tropical Forest Studies. These results are important for developing ecologically sound conservation and management strategies for species-rich tropical forests.