The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical Rain Forest
I.M. TURNER
Singapore Botanic Gardens
The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical Rain Forest – The Tropical rain forest is one of the major vegetation types of the globe (Richards 1996; Whitmore 1998). It is an essentially equatorial and strongly hygrophilous biome as its name suggests and is found on all the continents that the tropics touch.
Tropical rain forest is defined physiognomic Ally with typical features being a closed, evergreen canopy of 25 m or more in height dominated by mesophyll-sized leaves, with an abundance of thick-stemmed woody climbers and both herbaceous and woody epiphytes. Altitude has a marked effect on forest physiognomy above about 1500 m, and montane facies have to be distinguished.
The so-called tropical diurnal climate has a temperature regime in which the major periodicity is the daily march from night-time lows to afternoon highs. The fluctuation through the year in mean monthly temperatures is usually of smaller magnitude than the typical daily temperature range.
Temperatures usually average at around 27 °C at lowland weather stations in tropical rain-forest regions, and minima rarely, if ever, enter the chilling range below 10 °C. Rainfall is generally at least 2000 mm per annum, and a month with less than 100 mm is considered dry.
Rain forests can withstand dry periods though prolonged, or particularly severe, droughts on a regular basis usually led to drought-deciduous forest replacing the true rain forest.
Many rain forests do persist despite annual dry seasons, though only if the trees have access to ground water in areas experiencing long periods without rain.
Edaphic factors including soil Physico-chemical properties and drainage regime influence the floristic, physiognomic and structural characteristics of the tropical rain-forest community strongly.
Forest formations can be recognized for major soil groups and inundation classes across the geographic range of tropical rain forest. For instance, heath forest that occurs on acidic, highly leached sands is readily distinguishable whether one is in Asia, Africa or America.
Tropical Trees
I include in the category of tree, any free-standing plant that attains a diameter at breast height (dbh) of at least 1 cm, as this has become the lower limit of inclusion for a global network of tropical forest plots (Condit 1995). As well as the arborescent dicotyledonous species the term tropical tree brings to mind, I also include gymnosperms, woody monocotyledons, tree-ferns and bananas and their kin (Table 1.1)
The latter are herbaceous, but their large size means that they can be considered trees, at least in terms of the structure of the forest. All the other groups have many fewer species than the dicotyledons, particularly the non-angiosperm classes. However, palms are an important component of most tropical forests and dominate some forest types.
As with most ecological classifications, there are fuzzy edges to any definition of tree. Many large woody climbers have juvenile stages indistinguishable from tree saplings. Woody hemi-epiphytes, mostly figs (Ficus spp.), but also species of Clusia, some Araliaceous and a few others (Putz & Holbrook 1986), begin life as epiphytes, but grow roots down to the ground and become terrestrial. Their host tree may eventually die, and the hemi-epiphyte is left mechanically independent: it has become a true tree.
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The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical Rain Forest
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