title: Spatial patterns in the tropical forest reveal connections between negative feedback, aggregation and abundance.
abstract: The spatial arrangement of trees in a tropical forest reflects the interplay between aggregating processes, like dispersal limitation, and negative feedback that induces effective repulsion among individuals. Monitoring the variance-mean ratio for conspecific individuals along length-scales, we show that the effect of negative feedback is dominant at short scales, while aggregation characterizes the large-scale patterns. A comparison of different species indicates, surprisingly, that both aggregation and negative feedback scales are related to the overall abundance of the species. This suggests a bottom-up control mechanism, in which the negative feedback dictates the dispersal kernel and the overall abundance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel. Electronic address: efrat083@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Efrat
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seri
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel. Electronic address: nadav.shnerb@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Nadav
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shnerb
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D005246:Feedback; D065928:Forests; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014329:Tropical Climate
keywords: Aggregation; Biodiversity; Janzen–Connell mechanism; Spatial structure; Trees