Collaborative Research: LTREB: Long-term Studies of Flowering, Fruiting and Seedling Recruitment in Neotropical Forests: Global Change, Climate Variability and Species Coexistence

虽然热带森林支持着大约60%的开花植物物种和50%的陆地NPP和陆地生物量中储存的碳，但对热带森林的长期研究很少，特别是对影响开花、种子生产和幼苗建立、生长和死亡的因素的研究。了解在繁殖和再生生命历史阶段维持多样性的力量对于理解和维持热带森林多样性至关重要。由于缺乏对热带森林植物繁殖和早期更新的长期定量研究，因此很难确定与自然气候变化的关系以及人为强迫可能造成的长期趋势。这项研究将对三个新热带森林中的植物繁殖和苗木建立进行长期的定量研究，这些研究在干扰状况、季节性和多样性方面有所不同。厄瓜多尔、巴拿马和波多黎各在厄尔尼诺南方涛动、北大西洋涛动、飓风扰动和人为全球变化的潜在影响方面对气候强迫的影响有所不同。这些关于种子雨和幼苗招募的时间和空间模式的数据可以检验关于年际变化的原因和不同机制在促进物种共存方面的作用的假设，这些机制包括招募限制、竞争-殖民权衡、密度依赖和更新生态位分化；所有这些机制被假设对物种共存和森林动态是重要的。该LTREB项目将支持本科生和研究生的培训，向科学界提供新的数据，并向公众宣传全球变化研究的重要性。在这里的网站上公布所有数据和相关分析将确保从收集的数据中获得最大的社会效益。

ABSTRACTWhile, tropical forests support perhaps 60% of all flowering plant species and 50% of all terrestrial NPP and carbon stored in terrestrial biomass, few long-term studies of tropical forests have been conducted, particularly studies of factors affecting flowering, seed production and seedling establishment, growth and mortality. Knowledge of the forces that maintain diversity during the reproduction and regeneration life history stages is critical to understanding and maintaining tropical forest diversity. The absence of long-term, quantitative studies of reproduction and early regeneration of tropical forest plants has made it difficult to identify relationships with natural climate variation as well as possible long-term trends caused by anthropogenic forcing. The research will maintain long-term quantitative studies of plant reproduction and seedling establishment in three Neotropical forests varying in disturbance regime, seasonality and diversity. Ecuador, Panama and Puerto Rico vary in the influence of climatic forcing by the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, hurricane disturbance and the potential effect of anthropogenic global change. These data on temporal and spatial patterns of seed rain and seedling recruitment allow tests of hypotheses concerning causes of interannual variation and roles of different mechanisms in facilitating species coexistence including recruitment limitation, competition-colonization trade-offs, density-dependence and regeneration niche differentiation; all mechanisms hypothesized to be important to species coexistence and forest dynamics. This LTREB project will support the training of undergraduate and graduate students, provide new data to the scientific community, and inform the general public on the importance of global change research. Publishing all data and associated analyses on a web site here will insure maximum societal benefit from the data collected.