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

摘要虽然热带森林可能支持60%的开花植物物种和50%的陆地NPP和陆地生物量碳储量，但很少有对热带森林的长期研究，特别是对开花、种子生产和幼苗建立、生长和死亡的影响因素的研究。了解在繁殖和再生生活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的繁殖和早期再生的长期定量研究，因此难以确定它们与自然气候变化的关系以及由人为强迫引起的可能的长期趋势。该研究将对三种不同干扰制度、季节性和多样性的新热带森林的植物繁殖和幼苗建立进行长期定量研究。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的气候强迫影响方面各不相同。这些关于种子雨和幼苗招募的时空格局的数据可以检验关于年际变化的原因和促进物种共存的不同机制的作用的假设，包括招募限制、竞争-殖民化权衡、密度依赖和再生生态位分化；所有机制都被认为对物种共存和森林动态具有重要意义。这个LTREB项目将支持本科生和研究生的培训，为科学界提供新的数据，并使公众了解全球变化研究的重要性。在一个网站上发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.