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- Title
EARLY PERFORMANCE PREDICTS CANOPY ATTAINMENT ACROSS LIFE HISTORIES IN SUBALPINE FOREST TREES.
- Authors
Landis, R. Matthew; Peart, David R.
- Abstract
Few individuals in canopy tree species attain the canopy and reproduce. Understanding why these select few succeed is fundamental to tree population ecology and forest community dynamics. Yet our understanding remains poor, because the time required to reach the canopy is long relative to experimental and demographic studies. We used a simple, yet powerful, approach to examine the long-term process of canopy recruitment. We compared early growth in proven "winners" (extant canopy trees) with that of "con- tenders" (extant saplings 75 cm tall to 5 cm dbh). The resulting analyses relate early radial growth (after reaching 50 cm height) to survival, implicit in the long-term persistence of winners. We focused on the three major tree species of subalpine forests in the northeastern United States: shade-intolerant mountain birch (Betula cordifolia), shade-tolerant balsam fir (Abies balsamea), and highly shade-tolerant red spruce (Picea rubens). For all species, extant canopy trees grew faster than extant saplings at equivalent ages and sizes. For shade-intolerant B. cordifolia, no surviving canopy trees, or even saplings, had slow early growth. Even in shade-tolerant A. balsamea and P. rubens, surprisingly few individuals with slow early growth were represented in the canopy, even though both saplings and canopy trees survived slow growth for up to 50 years later in life. Thus, long- term success in reaching the canopy was strongly determined by fast early growth rates, across all species and life histories. We discuss implications for understanding the physiology of shade tolerance and for modeling forest dynamics. Most current models of forest tree population and community dynamics ignore individual growth history, but our results suggest that failure to account for growth history may overestimate long-term survival of shade-tolerant species.
- Subjects
FOREST ecology; COPPICE forest ecology; PLANT populations; TREES; BIODIVERSITY; ECOLOGY
- Publication
Ecology, 2005, Vol 86, Issue 1, p63
- ISSN
0012-9658
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1890/03-0848