Jonathan and colleagues from the ForestGEO network publish a paper in Nature titled “Latitudinal scaling of aggregation with abundance and coexistence in forests”. Thanks to Thorsten Wiegand and Xugao Wang for leading this project!
Figure 1: a, Illustration of a simulated pattern of a species with abundance N = 500 individuals in a 25-ha area with mean neighbourhood density D = 0.0116 trees per m2, mean tree density λ = 0.002 trees per m2 and aggregation Ω = D/λ = 5.8 (colours represent different clusters of individual trees of the same species). b, Entire clusters of the pattern in a were removed (N = 100). Through this step, the neighbourhood density was approximately maintained (D = 0.0107), but because λ was reduced by a factor of 1/5, aggregation increased approximately 5 times (Ω = 26.7). c, Individuals of the pattern in a were randomly removed (N = 100). Through this step, D and λ were reduced by a factor of 4.93 and 5.0, respectively, which approximately maintained aggregation (Ω = 5.9). We estimated D and Ω for 10-m neighbourhoods around the focal individuals.