Jonathan, William, and colleagues from the Mast Inference and Prediction (MASTIF) network publish a paper in Ecology Letters titled “The Relationship Between Maturation Size and Maximum Tree Size From Tropical to Boreal Climates”. Thanks to Valentin Journé and Jim Clark for leading this project!
Figure: Hypothesised association between maturation size (dmat) and maximum size (dmax) (a) and the relative size at maturation (drel = dmat ∕ dmax) (b) (Equation (1)). To highlight the effects of size (parameter 𝛽d), values of parameter 𝛼 are selected to yield an equivalent diameter at dmax=60cm. Two ‘baseline’ hypotheses (dashed lines) are independence between dmat and dmax (black dotted) and proportionate delay (red dotted), the latter is expected if increased size incurs the same maturation delay at all size classes. Two alternative hypotheses are increasing (purple—accelerating risk model) or decreasing (blue— diminishing risk model) maturation delays in the largest size classes.