The glocal forest.

ABSTRACT: Spatial ecological patterns reflect the underlying processes that shape the structure of species and communities. Mechanisms like intra- and inter-specific competition, dispersal and host-pathogen interactions can act over a wide range of scales. Yet, the inference of such processes from patterns is a challenging task. Here we call attention to a quite unexpected phenomenon in the extensively studied tropical forest at the Barro-Colorado Island (BCI): the spatial deployment of (almost) all tree species is statistically equivalent, once distances are normalized by ℓ0, the typical distance between neighboring conspecific trees. Correlation function, cluster statistics and nearest-neighbor distance distribution become species-independent after this rescaling. Global observables (species frequ

SUBMITTER: Seri E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4425529 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature