Muller-Landau Helene C, Condit Richard S, Chave Jerome, Thomas Sean C, Bohlman Stephanie A, Bunyavejchewin Sarayudh, Davies Stuart, Foster Robin, Gunatilleke Savitri, Gunatilleke Nimal, Harms Kyle E, Hart Terese, Hubbell Stephen P, Itoh Akira, Kassim Abd Rahman, LaFrankie James V, Lee Hua Seng, Losos Elizabeth, Makana Jean-Remy, Ohkubo Tatsuhiro, Sukumar Raman, Sun I-Fang, Nur Supardi M N, Tan Sylvester, Thompson Jill, Valencia Renato, Muñoz Gorky Villa, Wills Christopher, Yamakura Takuo, Chuyong George, Dattaraja Handanakere Shivaramaiah, Esufali Shameema, Hall Pamela, Hernandez Consuelo, Kenfack David, Kiratiprayoon Somboon, Suresh Hebbalalu S, Thomas Duncan, Vallejo Martha Isabel, Ashton Peter
Ecol Lett. 2006 May;9(5):575-88. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00904.x.
The theory of metabolic ecology predicts specific relationships among tree stem diameter, biomass, height, growth and mortality. As demographic rates are important to estimates of carbon fluxes in forests, this theory might offer important insights into the global carbon budget, and deserves careful assessment. We assembled data from 10 old-growth tropical forests encompassing censuses of 367 ha and > 1.7 million trees to test the theory's predictions. We also developed a set of alternative predictions that retained some assumptions of metabolic ecology while also considering how availability of a key limiting resource, light, changes with tree size. Our results show that there are no universal scaling relationships of growth or mortality with size among trees in tropical forests. Observed patterns were consistent with our alternative model in the one site where we had the data necessary to evaluate it, and were inconsistent with the predictions of metabolic ecology in all forests.
代谢生态学理论预测了树木茎干直径、生物量、高度、生长和死亡率之间的特定关系。由于种群动态率对于森林碳通量的估算很重要，该理论可能为全球碳预算提供重要见解，值得仔细评估。我们收集了来自10片老龄热带森林的数据，涵盖了367公顷的普查数据和超过170万棵树木，以检验该理论的预测。我们还开发了一组替代预测，保留了代谢生态学的一些假设，同时考虑了关键限制资源（光）的可用性如何随树木大小而变化。我们的结果表明，热带森林中树木的生长或死亡率与大小之间不存在普遍的比例关系。在我们有必要数据进行评估的一个地点，观察到的模式与我们的替代模型一致，而在所有森林中均与代谢生态学的预测不一致。
