Buttress trees in a 20-hectare tropical dipterocarp rainforest in Xishuangbanna, SW China  

作　　者：Zhiyuan He Yong Tang Xiaobao Deng Min Cao 

机构地区：[1]Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology,Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden,the Chinese Academy of Sciences,Mengla 666303,China [2]University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China

出　　处：《Journal of Plant Ecology》2013年第2期187-192,共6页植物生态学报（英文版）

基　　金：National Natural Science Foundation of China(31070411);the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

摘　　要：Aims buttresses are prevalent and are important to many ecological processes in tropical rainforests but are overlooked in many rainforest studies.based on a buttress survey in a 20-hectare plot,this study aims to answer the following questions:(i)is buttress forming a fixed species characteristic?(ii)is there any phylogenetic signal for buttress forming across a broad taxonomic scale?(iii)is buttress form-ing an inherent feature or simply induced by environmental factors,and how is this relevant to the size of the tree?Methods We surveyed buttresses for all 95940 trees with diameter at breast height(DbH)≥10 mm in a 20-ha tropical dipterocarp rainforest in Xishuangbanna,sW China.The occurrence of buttresses was compared across different taxa and across different tree-size classes.a phylogenetic analysis was conducted among buttressed and non-buttressed species in order to understand the evolutionary background of buttress formation.Important Findings This preliminary study showed that buttress trees are very abundant(making up 32%of trees with≥100 mm DbH)in this 20-ha tropical rainforest situated at the northern edge of the tropics.Fifty-one percent of the 468 tree species in the plot had stems that produced buttresses.large trees were more likely to develop buttresses than smaller ones.We found that although buttress formation is not a fixed species characteristic,there is a strong phylogenetic signal for buttress formation in larger species.

关 键 词：BUTTRESS phylogenetic signal tropical rainforest species size XISHUANGBANNA 

分 类 号：S71[农业科学—林学]