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Plant ecology (communication arising)

Tree-species competition and coexistence

Nature volume 422, pages 580–581 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

How apparently similar plant species coexist is a puzzle. Kelly and Bowler1 claim that environmental fluctuation promotes the coexistence of tree species by alternately favouring recruitment of common and rare congeners in a dry tropical forest. Here I argue that current knowledge of tropical-forest ecology does not support the authors' focus on congeneric competition, and show that their use of diameter distributions to date recruitment fluctuations may be misleading. It is therefore doubtful, at this stage, that recruitment patterns of the authors' congeneric pairs can be linked to the sort of competition dynamic that they envisage.

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Figure 1: Recruitment fluctuations as indicated by population age structure (green bars) and by use of stem diameter as a proxy for age (orange bars) in a population of Weinmannia racemosa (n = 216) in an old-growth temperate forest in New Zealand9.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Botánica, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile

    Chris Lusk

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  1. Chris Lusk
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Correspondence to Chris Lusk.

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Lusk, C. Tree-species competition and coexistence. Nature 422, 580–581 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/422580b

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/422580b

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