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Background and aims: We explored the hypothesis that low soil water-holding capacity is the main factor driving the monodominance of Brosimum rubescens in a monodominant forest in Southern Amazonia. Tropical monodominant forests are rare ecosystems with low diversity and high dominance of a single tree species. The causes of this atypical condition are still poorly understood. Some studies have shown a relationship between monodominance and waterlogging or soil attributes, while others have concluded that edaphic factors have little or no explanatory value, but none has accounted for soil-moisture variation other than waterlogging. This study is the first to explicitly explore how low soil water-holding capacity influences the monodominance of tropical forests. Methods: We conducted in situ measurements of vertical soil moisture using electrical resistance collected over 1 year at 0–5; 35–40 and 75–80 cm depths in a B. rubescens monodominant forest and in an adjacent mixed-species forest in the Amazon-Cerrado transition zone, Brazil. Minimum leaf water potential (Ψmin) of the seven most common species, including B. rubescens, and soil water-holding capacity for both forests were determined. Results: The vertical soil moisture decay pattern was similar in both forests for all depths. However, the slightly higher water availability in the monodominant forest and Ψmin similarity between B. rubescens and nearby mixed forest species indicate that low water-availability does not cause the monodominance. Conclusions: We reject the hypothesis that monodominance of B. rubescens is primarily determined by low soil water-holding capacity, reinforcing the idea that monodominance in tropical forests is not determined by a single factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The study was conducted in a Brosimum rubescens Taub. monodominant forest in Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso state (14°49.8′S and 52°9.6′W), in the transition zone between the Cerrado and Amazonian Forest in central Brazil. The structure and dynamics of the natural regeneration was compared over a five-year period to identify patterns that affect seedling establishment and explain the maintenance of B. rubescens dominance. We raised the following questions: how does the structure and dynamics of a monodominant forest regeneration vary over time? What patterns affect seedling establishment and help to explain the maintenance of the monodominance of B. rubescens? Natural regeneration was sampled in 30 plots of 1 m × 1 m (seedlings), 2 × 2 (saplings), 5 × 5 (poles) and 10 × 10 (treelets). In the first inventory, the natural regeneration structure was characterized by a higher concentration of individuals in lower height classes and the largest number of seedlings of B. rubescens may be related to rainfall distribution in previous years. Seedling establishment may be limited by drier periods such as “El Niño” events, or by specific light conditions reaching the forest floor. Formation of a persistent seedling bank may provide a competitive advantage for the regeneration of B. rubescens in conditions of gaps pre-opening thus contributing to monodominance maintenance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Competition among trees is an important driver of community structure and dynamics in tropical forests. Neighboring trees may impact an individual tree's growth rate and probability of mortality, but large-scale geographic and environmental variation in these competitive effects has yet to be evaluated across the tropical forest biome. We quantified effects of competition on tree-level basal area growth and mortality for trees ≥10-cm diameter across 151 ~1-ha plots in mature tropical forests in Amazonia and tropical Africa by developing nonlinear models that accounted for wood density, tree size, and neighborhood crowding. Using these models, we assessed how water availability (i.e., climatic water deficit) and soil fertility influenced the predicted plot-level strength of competition (i.e., the extent to which growth is reduced, or mortality is increased, by competition across all individual trees). On both continents, tree basal area growth decreased with wood density and increased with tree size. Growth decreased with neighborhood crowding, which suggests that competition is important. Tree mortality decreased with wood density and generally increased with tree size, but was apparently unaffected by neighborhood crowding. Across plots, variation in the plot-level strength of competition was most strongly related to plot basal area (i.e., the sum of the basal area of all trees in a plot), with greater reductions in growth occurring in forests with high basal area, but in Amazonia, the strength of competition also varied with plot-level wood density. In Amazonia, the strength of competition increased with water availability because of the greater basal area of wetter forests, but was only weakly related to soil fertility. In Africa, competition was weakly related to soil fertility and invariant across the shorter water availability gradient. Overall, our results suggest that competition influences the structure and dynamics of tropical forests primarily through effects on individual tree growth rather than mortality and that the strength of competition largely depends on environment-mediated variation in basal area., (© 2020 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Ecological Society of America.)