Tropical forests challenge us to understand biodiversity, as numerous seemingly similar species persist on only a handful of shared resources. Recent ecological theory posits that biodiversity is sustained by a combination of species differences reducing interspecific competition and species similarities increasing time to competitive exclusion. Together, these mechanisms counterintuitively predict that competing species should cluster by traits, in contrast with traditional expectations of trait overdispersion. Here, we show for the first time that trees in a tropical forest exhibit a clustering pattern. In a 50 ha. plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, species abundances exhibit clusters in two traits connected to light capture strategy, suggesting that competition for light structures community composition. Notably, we find four clusters by maximum height, quantitatively supporting the classical grouping of Neotropical woody plants into shrubs, understory, midstory, and canopy layers.

中文翻译：

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计数生态位：特征丰富度模式揭示了新热带森林中的生态位划分

热带森林挑战我们了解生物多样性，因为许多看似相似的物种仅在少数共享资源上生存。最近的生态理论认为，生物多样性是通过物种差异减少种间竞争和物种相似性增加竞争排斥时间的组合来维持的。总之，这些机制违反直觉地预测竞争物种应该按性状聚集，这与传统的性状过度分散预期相反。在这里，我们首次展示了热带森林中的树木表现出集群模式。在 50 公顷。在巴拿马巴罗科罗拉多岛的情节中，物种丰度在与光捕获策略相关的两个特征中表现出集群，表明对光结构群落组成的竞争。尤其，