Treesearch

We studied the rates and patterns of carbon and nutrient fuxes in litterfall in ten tropical tree plantation species grown at the USDA Forest Service Arboretum in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico. The stands were 26-years old and grew under similar climatic and edaphic conditions. Individual plantation species ranked differently in terms of their capacity to return mass and speci®c nutrients to the forest foor, and with respect to their ef®ciency of nutrient use. The species that returned the most mass did not return the most P, N, or cations. Moreover, species differed...

Change in the surface temperature of the coastal plain of 1 to 2C and/or a 11 to 33% change in annual rainfall could dramatically alter the distribution of forest vegetation within the Luquillo Experimental Forest(LEF) of northeastern Puerto Rico.

The purpose of this paper is to compile all the records of birds from the West Indian island of St. Kitts. These records are based on observations and museum specimens, both published and unpublished, covering a span of 110 years. Using mostly our own field data from the 1970’s and 1980’s, we describe the modern status and habitat preference of resident landbirds. Our historical review of land use patterns and ornithology on St. Kitts provides a foundation for future studies on the avifauna of this and nearby islands.

Ants were studied on Puerto Rico and 44 islands surrounding Puerto Rico. Habitat diversity was the best predictor of the number of species per island and the distributions of species followed a nested subset pattern. The number of extinctions per island was low, approximately 1 to 2 extinctions per island in a period of 18 years, and the rates of colonization seem to be greater than the extinction rates. Ant dynamics on these islands do not seem to support the basic MacArthur and Wilson model of island biogeography. The MacArthur and Wilson equilibrium is based on the notion that species...

This book is intended as a reference for those who are to make tropical American forests productive; the students in the forestry schools of the region. There has been a serious lack of a general reference as to what is already known about forest production that might be applicable within the American Tropics. The present book, which is to be translated, is intended to reduce that deficiency. This books focuses on the potentialities of forests. An imbalance between forest productivity and human demands is now so widespread it affects all livings species on Earth. Yet past attempts to...

Little is known about non-mycorrhizal endophytic fungi in tropical orchids; still less is known about how endophytes vary within and between individual orchid plants. Fungal endophytes were isolated from roots and leaves of epiphytic and lithophytic orchids in the genus Lepanthes; seven species, from rainforests in Puerto Rico, were sampled. The endophytes observed most frequently were Xylaria species and Rhizoctonia-like fungi, found in 29%of roots and 19%of leaves, and 45%of roots and 31%of leaves, respectively. Five deuteromycete genera were also isolated, occurring in 19%of roots and...