DOI: 10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfz4h
title: Data from: Tree demographic strategies largely overlap across succession in Neotropical wet and dry forest communities

description: Secondary tropical forests play an increasingly important role in carbon
 budgets and biodiversity conservation. Understanding successional
 trajectories is therefore imperative for guiding forest restoration and
 climate change mitigation efforts. Forest succession is driven by the
 demographic strategies – combinations of growth, mortality, and
 recruitment rates – of the tree species in the community. However, our
 understanding of demographic diversity in tropical tree species stems
 almost exclusively from old-growth forests. Here, we assembled demographic
 information from repeated forest inventories along chronosequences in two
 wet (Costa Rica, Panama) and two dry (Mexico) Neotropical forests to
 assess whether the ranges of demographic strategies present in a community
 shift across succession. We calculated demographic rates for &gt;500
 tree species while controlling for canopy status to compare demographic
 diversity (i.e. the ranges of demographic strategies) in early
 successional (0-30 years), late successional (30-120 years), and
 old-growth forests using two-dimensional hypervolumes of pairs of
 demographic rates. Ranges of demographic strategies largely overlapped
 across successional stages, and early successional stages already covered
 the full spectrum of demographic strategies found in old-growth forests.
 An exception was a group of species characterized by exceptionally high
 mortality rates that were confined to early successional stages in the two
 wet forests. The range of demographic strategies did not expand with
 succession. Our results suggest that studies of long-term forest
 monitoring plots in old-growth forests, from which most of our current
 understanding of demographic strategies of tropical tree species is
 derived, are surprisingly representative of demographic diversity in
 general, but do not replace the need for further studies in secondary
 forests.
description: # Tree demographic strategies largely overlap across succession in
 Neotropical wet and dry forest communities
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfz4h](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfz4h) This dataset contains all data and R scripts to reproduce the results and figures from Schorn et al. (in revision): "Tree demographic strategies largely overlap across succession in Neotropical wet and dry forest communities", *Ecology.* Necessary data like demographic rates for all species in the studied sites are stored in the data folder. Some results needed to produce the figures are already stored in the results folder, but can be independently reproduced in the scripts 01_hypervolumes.R and 02_bootstrap_rarefaction.R. All scripts are stored in the scripts folder. ## Description of the data and file structure #### demographic\_rates\_site.txt Contains growth, survival, and recruitment rates for all species in all successional stages per site. Needed to compute the hypervolumes and to produce Figures 2, S3-S6, and S11-S14. * *sp*: 8 letter species code * *time_slice*: Successional stage ("0-30" for early successional forests, "30-120" for late-successional forests, "old_growth" for old-growth forests) * *growth1*: Growth rate in canopy layer 1 (mm dbh/year) * *growth2*: Growth rate in canopy layer 2 (mm dbh/year) * *growth3*: Growth rate in canopy layer 3 (mm dbh/year) * *growth4*: Growth rate in canopy layer 4 (mm dbh/year) * *growth1_sample_size*: Number of growth observations used to derive the growth rate in canopy layer 1 * *growth2_sample_size*: Number of growth observations used to derive the growth rate in canopy layer 2 * *growth3_sample_size*: Number of growth observations used to derive the growth rate in canopy layer 3 * *growth4_sample_size*: Number of growth observations used to derive the growth rate in canopy layer 4 * *survival1*: Survival rate in canopy layer 1 (%) * *survival2*: Survival rate in canopy layer 1 (%) * *survival3*: Survival rate in canopy layer 1 (%) * *survival4*: Survival rate in canopy layer 1 (%) * *survival1_sample_size*: Number of observations used to derive the survival rate in canopy layer 1 * *survival2_sample_size*: Number of observations used to derive the survival rate in canopy layer 2 * *survival3_sample_size*: Number of observations used to derive the survival rate in canopy layer 3 * *survival4_sample_size*: Number of observations used to derive the survival rate in canopy layer 4 * *recruits_year*: Number of observed recruits per year * *recruits_year_ha*: Number of observed recruits per year and hectare * *recruits_year_per_capita*: Number of observed recruits per capita #### inventory\_*site*.txt Contains the number of individuals of species in 5-year stand age classes per site. Needed to produce Figure 4 and Figures S8 and S9. * *sp*: 8 letter species code * *ageclass*: 5 years stand age class ("5" for 0-5 years, "10" for 6-10 years, etc; "400" for old-growth forests) * *Nperha_5cm*: Number of individuals per ha with &gt;= 5cm dbh * *Nperha_total*: Number of individuals per ha with &gt;= 1cm dbh #### Sites\_Plots\_Ages\_Cutoffs\_Areas.txt Contains information on stand age, size, and dbh cutoffs for all forest inventory plots used in the paper. Needed to produce figures S1 and S2. * *site*: Name of the site * *time_slice*: Successional stage that the census interval is assigned ("0-30" for early successional forests, "30-120" for late-successional forests, "old_growth" for old-growth forests) * *dataset*: Name of the dataset the plot is part of * *plotcode*: Plot ID * *census_1*: Year in which the first measurement of the respective census interval was conducted. * *census_2*: Year in which the second measurement of the respective census interval was conducted. * *age_1*: Stand age at the time of the first measurement of the respective census interval. * *age_2*: Stand age at the time of the second measurement of the respective census interval. * *interval_length_in_years*: Length of the census interval in years * *interval_id*: Unique identifier for the census interval * *general_dbh_cutoff_cm*: The dbh cutoff that applies to the entire area of the plot in the respective census interval. * *total_area_ha*: Total area of the plot in the respective census interval. * *dbh_cutoff_for_subplots_1_cm*: Value of the dbh cutoff that applied to a subplot within the plot (cm) * *area_subplots_1_ha*: Area of the subplot to which the dbh cutoff above applies (ha) * *dbh_cutoff_for_subplots_2_cm*: Value of the dbh cutoff that is applied to a second subplot within the plot (cm) * *area_subplots_2_ha*: Area of the subplot to which the second dbh cutoff above applies (ha) * *used_for_recruitment_1cm*: 1 if the census interval was used to calculate recruitment rates (boolean) * *area_for_recruitment_1cm_ha*: Area of the plot/subplot with 1cm dbh cutoff used to calculate per hectare recruitment rates (ha) * *area_1cm_ha*: Area of the plot/subplot with 1 cm dbh cutoff (ha) used to calculate, e.g., per hectare abundances * *area_2.5cm_ha*: Area of the plot/subplot with 2.5 cm dbh cutoff (ha) used to calculate, e.g., per hectare abundances * *area_5cm_ha*: Area of the plot/subplot with 5 cm dbh cutoff (ha) used to calculate, e.g., per hectare abundances * *area_7.5cm_ha*: Area of the plot/subplot with 7.5 cm dbh cutoff (ha) used to calculate, e.g., per hectare abundances * *area_10cm_ha*: Area of the plot/subplot with 10 cm dbh cutoff (ha) used to calculate, e.g., per hectare abundances #### species\_list\_all\_sites.txt * *sp*: 8 letter species code * *genus*: Genus name * *species: Species name * *sp_full*: Full species name (Genus & species) * *authority*: Author citation * *family*: Family name ## Code/Software All code was developed under R version 4.3.1