Soil nutrients influence spatial distributions of tropical tree species

The importance of niche vs. neutral assembly mechanisms in structuring tropical tree communities remains an important unsettled question in community ecology [Bell G (2005) Ecology 86:1757-1770]. There is ample evidence that species distributions are determined by soils and habitat factors at landscape (0.5 million individual trees of 1,400 species and 10 essential plant nutrients, we used Monte Carlo simulations of species distributions to test plant-soil associations against null expectations based on dispersal assembly. We found that the spatial distributions of 36-51% of tree species at these sites show strong associations to soil nutrient distributions. Neutral dispersal assembly cannot account for these…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: DEB 0212818, 9806828, 0090311, DEB 0212284, 0211115, 0314581, DEB 0211115, 0212818, OISE 0314581, 0212284, DEB 0211004
• SI
  Smithsonian Institution
• JD
  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• AW
  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• BS
  Bristol-Myers Squibb
• ST
  Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

  Award: OISE 0314581
• OO
  Office of International Science and Engineering

  Award: 0314581