How ecologists think about above‐ground forest structure and dynamics is fundamentally
shaped by the data we can collect. This has historically been limited to what is possible with …

Tropical ecosystems store over half of the world's aboveground live carbon as biomass, and
water availability plays a key role in its distribution. Although precipitation and temperature …

Canopy gaps are openings in the forest canopy resulting from branch fall and tree mortality
events. The geographical distribution of large canopy gaps may reflect underlying variation …

Forest gaps, which are formed by small-scale disturbances that often occur in forest
communities, are the most dominant form of disturbance in many types of forests around the …

For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South
America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm …

Changes in climate, including increases in the frequency of lightning, will differentially affect
the fitness and mortality of tropical tree species. Variation in the sensitivity of species to …

Pioneer trees require high‐light environments for successful seedling establishment.
Consequently, seeds of these species often persist in the soil seed bank (SSB) for periods …

Blowdown events are a major natural disturbance in the central Amazon Forest, but their
impact and subsequent vegetation recovery have been poorly understood. This study aimed …

Lightning is an important agent of mortality for large tropical trees with implications for tree
demography and forest carbon budgets. We evaluated interspecific differences in …

Lightning is an important agent of plant mortality and disturbance in forests. Lightning‐
caused disturbance is highly variable in terms of its area of effect and disturbance severity …