Performance of tropical forest seedlings under shade and drought: an interspecific trade-off in demographic responses.

ABSTRACT: Seedlings in moist tropical forests must cope with deep shade and seasonal drought. However, the interspecific relationship between seedling performance in shade and drought remains unsettled. We quantified spatiotemporal variation in shade and drought in the seasonal moist tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, and estimated responses of naturally regenerating seedlings as the slope of the relationship between performance and shade or drought intensity. Our performance metrics were relative height growth and first-year survival. We investigated the relationship between shade and drought responses for up to 63 species. There was an interspecific trade-off in species responses to shade versus species responses to dry season intensity; species that performed worse in the sha

SUBMITTER: Kupers SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6906455 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature