The maintenance of species diversity by treefall gaps is a long‐standing paradigm in forest
ecology. Gaps are presumed to provide an environment in which tree species of differing …

The accumulation of species-specific enemies around adults is hypothesized to maintain
plant diversity by limiting the recruitment of conspecific seedlings relative to heterospecific …

Ecosystem productivity commonly increases asymptotically with plant species diversity, and
determining the mechanisms responsible for this well‐known pattern is essential to predict …

One of the main goals in ecology is determining the mechanisms that control the abundance
and distribution of organisms. Using data from 69 tropical forests worldwide, I demonstrate …

Regeneration in forest canopy gaps is thought to lead invariably to the rapid recruitment and
growth of trees and the redevelopment of the canopy. Our observations, however, suggest …

… Although rainfall in the 1990s returned to the levels of 1930s, the 60 years of declining
rainfall may have ameliorated the environment for liana establishment and proliferation (Schnitzer …

Recent studies have demonstrated the increasingly important role of lianas (woody vines) in
forest regeneration, species diversity and ecosystem-level processes, particularly in the …

Light is thought to be the most limiting resource in tropical forests, and thus above‐ground
competition is commonly accepted as the mechanism that structures these communities. In …

The abundance and diversity of lianas were examined along a tropical forest chronosequence
at the Barro Colorado Nature Monument, Panama. Lianas ≥0.5 cm diameter were …

Lianas compete intensely with trees, but few studies have examined long‐term effects of liana
infestation on tree growth and mortality. We quantified the effects of lianas in tree crowns (…