The importance of niche vs. neutral assembly mechanisms in structuring tropical tree
communities remains an important unsettled question in community ecology [Bell G (2005) …

Aims To test the relative importance of topography versus soil chemistry in defining tree
species-habitat associations in a terra firme Amazonian forest. Method We evaluated habitat …

The relative importance of deterministic and neutral processes on community assembly is
currently a topic of much debate among ecologists. Analyzing species-environment …

Tropical forest vegetation is shaped by climate and by soil, but understanding how the
distributions of individual tree species respond to specific resources has been hindered by …

Soil resource partitioning and dispersal limitation have been shown to shape the tree
community structure of mature tropical forests, but are poorly studied in the context of forest …

Questions Niche differentiation is a central explanation for the co‐existence and distribution
patterns of numerous tree species in tropical forests, but functional equivalence leading to …

Understanding how plant species coexist in tropical rainforests is one of the biggest
challenges in community ecology. One prominent hypothesis suggests that rare species are …

Both habitat filtering and dispersal limitation influence the compositional structure of forest
communities, but previous studies examining the relative contributions of these processes …

Neutral and niche theories give contrasting explanations for the maintenance of tropical tree
species diversity. Both have some empirical support, but methods to disentangle their effects …

Understanding the maintenance of high tropical tree species diversity requires disentangling
the effects of habitat vs. geographic distance. Using floristic, topographic, and soil nutrient …