Wageningen University, Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Centre for Ecosystem Studies, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Ecology. 2010 Feb;91(2):386-98. doi: 10.1890/08-1449.1.
Mechanistic models of community assembly state that biotic and abiotic filters constrain species establishment through selection on their functional traits. Predicting this assembly process is hampered because few studies directly incorporate environmental measurements and scale up from species to community level and because the functional traits' significance is environment dependent. We analyzed community assembly by measuring structure, environmental conditions, and species traits of secondary forests in a species-rich tropical system. We found, as hypothesized, that community structure shaped the local environment and that strong relationships existed between this environment and the traits of the most successful species of the regeneration communities. Path and multivariate analyses showed that temperature and leaf traits that regulate it were the most important factors of community differentiation. Comparisons between the trait composition of the forest's regeneration, juvenile, and adult communities showed a consistent community assembly pattern. These results allowed us to identify the major functional traits and environmental factors involved in the assembly of dry-forest communities and demonstrate that environmental filtering is a predictable and fundamental process of community assembly, even in a complex system such as a tropical forest.
群落组装的机制模型表明，生物和非生物过滤器通过对功能特征的选择来限制物种的建立。由于很少有研究直接结合环境测量并从物种扩展到群落水平，并且由于功能特征的重要性取决于环境，因此预测这个组装过程受到了阻碍。我们通过测量结构、环境条件和物种特征来分析丰富的热带系统中的次生林群落组装。我们发现，正如假设的那样，群落结构塑造了局部环境，并且这种环境与再生群落中最成功物种的特征之间存在很强的关系。路径和多元分析表明，温度和调节它的叶片特征是群落分化的最重要因素。森林再生、幼龄和成年群落的特征组成之间的比较显示出一致的群落组装模式。这些结果使我们能够确定参与干林群落组装的主要功能特征和环境因素，并证明环境过滤是群落组装的一个可预测和基本的过程，即使在热带森林等复杂系统中也是如此。
