Evidence concerning mechanisms hypothesized to explain species coexistence in hyper-
diverse communities is reviewed for tropical forest plants. Three hypotheses receive strong …

The maintenance of high diversity in tropical forests has long intrigued biologists. While
explanations for tropical tree species richness are nearly as varied as the forests, much …

Explaining the extraordinary species richness of tropical forests poses a difficult challenge to
community theory. How are we to account, for example, for the more than 700 species of …

There is an ongoing debate about whether communities are closely integrated and bound
together via interactions such as competition or facilitation, or are disintegrated and …

The Janzen–Connell hypothesis states that specialist pests and pathogens keep key plant
species rare enough or reduce their competitive ability enough so as to make space …

The intensity of competition among forest tree seedlings is poorly understood, but has
important ramifications for their recruitment and for the maintenance of species diversity …

Understanding tropical forest tree diversity has been a major challenge to ecologists. In the
absence of compensatory mechanisms, two powerful forces, drift and competition, are …

One of the central problems in ecology is to explain species diversity in communities, and a
considerable number of hypotheses with this purpose have been formulated during the last …

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 695–704 Abstract How extraordinary numbers of species can
coexist in hyper‐diverse communities remains unresolved. While numerous hypotheses …

Explaining the maintenance of tropical forest diversity under the countervailing forces of drift
and competition poses a major challenge to ecological theory. Janzen− Connell effects, in …