Tropical rain forests contain most of the worlds known biological diversity.
Understanding how this diversity persists in the face of anthropogenic
disturbance is an increasingly critical issue. To manage and preserve intact
ecosystems, and to restore degraded ones, a better knowledge of the basic
ecological processes that affect them is necessary. We must be able to answer
such questions as: How are plant communities structured? How is diversity
maintained in species-rich ecosystems? What ecological factors determine
which plants grow where? Many processes are known to shape...