Two tradeoffs for tropical rainforest trees (IMAGE)

University of Texas at Austin

Two tradeoffs for tropical rainforest trees

Caption

The team found that composition of a tropical rainforest over time depends on how each tree species balances two different sets of trade-offs: growth versus survival (for example, one type of tree might grow fast but die young) and stature versus reproduction (another might grow tall but reproduce leisurely). The team also discovered that the nearly 300 unique tree species that live on Barro Colorado Island in Panama (gray dots) can be represented in their computer model by just five functional groups and still produce accurate forecasts of tree composition and forest biomass over time.

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University of Texas at Austin/German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)

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