Seedling Recruitment in a Tropical Rain forest

ISBN-13: 9783836429269 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 96 str.

C. E. Timothy Paine

Opis

Tropical rain forests contain most of the worlds known biological diversity.Understanding how this diversity persists in the face of anthropogenicdisturbance is an increasingly critical issue. To manage and preserve intactecosystems, and to restore degraded ones, a better knowledge of the basicecological processes that affect them is necessary. We must be able to answersuch questions as: How are plant communities structured? How is diversitymaintained in species-rich ecosystems? What ecological factors determinewhich plants grow where? Many processes are known to shape plantcommunities, but what is their relative importance? Approaching answers tothese questions is the primary focus of this book. The book presents a casestudy, built upon experiments performed in a Peruvian rain forest. The authorconducted a series of manipulative experiments on tree seedlings to dissectthe various forces that shape their coexistence. This book is directed to anaudience of ecologists, forest researchers, and conservationists.