Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:02:37.525Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Population age structures, persistence and flowering cues in Cerberiopsis candelabra (Apocynaceae), a long-lived monocarpic rain-forest tree in New Caledonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2021

Jennifer Read Open the ORCID record for Jennifer Read [Opens in a new window] ,
Gordon D. Sanson ,
Martin Burd ,
Kathryn Allen ,
Quan Hua ,
Stuart Kerr ,
Sandrine Isnard ,
Stephane McCoy  and
Magdalena Carrasco
Jennifer Read*
Affiliation:
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria3800, Australia
Gordon D. Sanson
Affiliation:
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria3800, Australia
Martin Burd
Affiliation:
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria3800, Australia
Kathryn Allen
Affiliation:
Geography, Planning and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart7001, Australia
Quan Hua
Affiliation:
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Locked Bag 2001, Kirrawee DC, NSW2232, Australia
Stuart Kerr
Affiliation:
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria3800, Australia
Sandrine Isnard
Affiliation:
AMAP, Univ Montpellier, IRD, CIRAD, CNRS, INRAE, Montpellier, France
Stephane McCoy
Affiliation:
Environmental Conservation Service, Prony Resources New Caledonia, BP 218 Nouméa, 98845New Caledonia
Magdalena Carrasco
Affiliation:
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria3800, Australia
*
Author for correspondence: Jennifer Read, Email: jenny.read@monash.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cerberiopsis candelabra Vieill. is a long-lived, monocarpic (= semelparous) and mass-flowering rain-forest tree, endemic to New Caledonia. Population size structures suggest establishment has been episodic, followed by a recruitment gap that might signal population decline. Here, we use age structures based on tree rings to better assess population dynamics and persistence, and investigate influences of tree size, age and growth rate on flowering. Age structures of populations surveyed in 2007–2008 were unimodal, with establishment over c. 15–81 y, followed by a recruitment gap of c. 23–79 y. Seedling mortality was generally high. High densities of flowering trees or large-scale exogenous disturbances may be necessary for in-situ regeneration. There was no evidence of a simple flowering threshold: flowering in 2017 occurred across a wide range of tree size, age and growth rate. Instead, evidence suggested that size and age at flowering may vary among plants depending on their growth trajectory. Environmental triggers of flowering were not identified by dating tree establishment, but the last three mass-flowering events occurred in years of tropical cyclones. Regeneration and persistence might be facilitated if large-scale disturbances trigger flowering, improving reproductive efficiency by synchronising flowering and linking reproduction with environmental conditions that enhance seedling recruitment.

Keywords

Flowering cuesmass floweringmastingmonocarpymonodominancepopulation dynamicsrain forestregeneration
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 37 , Issue 6 , November 2021 , pp. 263 - 275
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Literature cited

Ashton, PS, Givnish, TJ and Appanah, S (1988) Staggered flowering in the Dipterocarpaceae: New insights into floral induction and the evolution of mast fruiting in the aseasonal tropics. The American Naturalist 132, 44–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Augspurger, CK (1985) Demography and life history variation of Puya dasylirioides, a long-lived rosette in tropical subalpine bogs. Oikos 45, 341–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, RL and Dell, TR (1973) Quantifying diameter distributions with the Weibull function. Forest Science 19, 97–104.Google Scholar
Bergonzi, S and Albani, MC (2011) Reproductive competence from an annual and a perennial perspective. Journal of Experimental Botany 62, 4415–4422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boiteau, P and Allorge, L (1981) Flora de la Nouvelle Calédonie et Dépendances 10. Apocynaceae. Muséum National D’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.Google Scholar
Boose, ER, Foster, DR and Fluet, M (1994) Hurricane impacts to tropical and temperate forest landscapes. Ecological Monographs 64, 369–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brienen, RJW and Zuidema, PA (2006) Lifetime growth patterns and ages of Bolivian rain forest trees obtained by tree ring analysis. Journal of Ecology 94, 481–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burd, M, Read, J, Sanson, GD and Jaffré, T (2006) Age-size plasticity for reproduction in monocarpic plants. Ecology 87, 2755–2764.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cha, S-H (2007) Comprehensive survey on distance/similarity measures between probability density functions. International Journal of Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences 1, 300–307.Google Scholar
Condit, R, Sukumar, R, Hubbell, SP and Foster, RB (1998) Predicting population trends from size distributions: a direct test in a tropical tree community. American Naturalist 152, 495–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, JH and Lowman, MD (1989) Low-diversity tropical rain forests: some possible mechanisms for their existence. The American Naturalist 134, 88–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delignette-Muller, ML and Dutang, C (2015) fitdistrplus: an R package for fitting distributions. Journal of Statistical Software 64 (4), 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, KJ, Davies, SJ, Noor, MNS, Kassim, AR and Tan, S (2007) Do current stem size distributions predict future population changes? An empirical test of intraspecific patterns in tropical trees at two spatial scales. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23, 191–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fink, D, Hotchkis, M, Hua, Q, Jacobsen, G, Smith, AM, Zoppi, U, Child, D, Mifsud, C, van der Gaast, H, Williams, A and Williams, M (2004) The ANTARES AMS Facility at ANSTO. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 223-224, 109–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, RB (1977) Tachygalia versicolor is a suicidal neotropical tree. Nature 268, 624–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henkel, TW and Mayor, JR (2019) Implications of a long-term mast seeding cycle for climatic entrainment, seedling establishment and persistent monodominance in a Neotropical, ectomycorrhizal canopy tree. Ecological Research 34, 472–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hett, JH and Loucks, OL (1976) Age structure models of balsam fir and eastern hemlock. Journal of Ecology 64, 1029–1044.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hijmans, RJ, Cameron, SE, Parra, JL, Jones, PG and Jarvis, A (2005) Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 25, 1965–1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hijmans, RJ, Guarino, L and Mathur, P (2012) DIVA-GIS Version 7.5 Manual available at: http://www.diva-gis.org/docs/DIVA-GIS_manual_7.pdf Google Scholar
Hopkins, MS and Graham, AW (1987) Gregarious flowering in a lowland tropical rainforest: A possible response to disturbance by Cyclone Winifred. Australian Journal of Ecology 12, 25–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hua, Q, Barbetti, M and Rakowski, AZ (2013) Atmospheric radiocarbon for the period 1950-2010. Radiocarbon 55, 2059–2072.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hua, Q, Barbetti, M, Zoppi, U, Fink, D, Watanasak, M and Jacobsen, GE (2004) Radiocarbon in tropical tree rings during the Little Ice Age. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 223-224, 489–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hua, Q, Jacobsen, GE, Zoppi, U, Lawson, EM, Williams, AA, Smith, AM and McGann, MJ (2001) Progress in radiocarbon target preparation at the ANTARES AMS Centre. Radiocarbon 43, 275–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isnard, S, L’Huillier, L, Rigault, F and Jaffre, T (2016) How did the ultramafic soils shape the flora of the New Caledonian hotspot? Plant and Soil 403, 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacquemyn, H, Brys, R and Jongejans, E (2010) Size-dependent flowering and costs of reproduction affect population dynamics in a tuberous perennial woodland orchid. Journal of Ecology 98, 1204–1215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, DH (1976) Why bamboos wait so long to flower. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 7, 347–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, NL and Kotz, S (1970) Continuous univariate distributions-1. John Wiley & Sons, New York.Google Scholar
Kakishima, S, Liang, Y, Ito, T, Yang, TA, Lu, P-L, Okuyama, Y, Hasebe, M, Murata, J and Yoshimura, J (2019) Evolutionary origin of a periodical mass-flowering plant. Ecology and Evolution 9, 4373–4381.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kakishima, S, Yoshimura, J, Murata, H and Murata, J (2011) 6-Year periodicity and variable synchronicity in a mass-flowering plant. PLoS ONE 6, e28140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeley, JE and Bond, WJ (1999) Mast flowering and semelparity in bamboos: the bamboo fire cycle hypothesis. American Naturalist 154, 383–391.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelly, D, Geldenhuis, A, James, A, Holland, EP, Plank, MJ, Brockie, RE, Cowan, PE, Harper, GA, Lee, WG, Maitland, MJ, Mark, AF, Mills, JA, Wilson, PR and Byrom, AE (2013) Masting in a temperate tree: Evidence for environmental prediction? Ecology Letters 16, 90–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, D and Sork, VL (2002) Mast seeding in perennial plants: Why, how, where? Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 33, 427–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, DA (2005) Linking tree form, allocation and growth with an allometrically explicit model. Ecological Modelling 185, 77–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, DA, Davies, SJ, Supardi, N and Noor, NSM (2006) Growth and mortality are related to adult tree size in a Malaysian mixed dipterocarp forest. Forest Ecology and Management 223, 152–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitajima, and Augspurger, (1989) Seed and seedling ecology of a monocarpic tropical tree, Tachigalia versicolor . Ecology 70, 1102–1114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuss, P, Rees, M, Ægisdóttir, H H, Ellner, SP and Stöcklin, J (2008) Evolutionary demography of long-lived monocarpic perennials: a time-lagged integral projection model. Journal of Ecology 96, 821–832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loveless, MD, Hamrick, JL and Foster, RB (1998) Population structure and mating system in Tachigali versicolor, a monocarpic neotropical tree. Heredity 81, 134–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maitrepierre, L (2012) Les types de temps et les cyclones, les éléments du climat. In Bonvallot, J, Gay, J-C and Habert, É (eds), Atlas de la Nouvelle-Calédonie. Marseille (France)-Nouméa (New Caledonia): IRD-Le congrès de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.Google Scholar
McCoy, S, Jaffre, T, Rigault, F and Ash, JE (1999) Fire and succession in the ultramafic maquis of New Caledonia. Journal of Biogeography 26, 579–594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, JC, Rose, KE and Rees, M (2003) Evolutionary demography of monocarpic perennials. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18, 471–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moron, V, Barbero, R and Robertson, AW (2016) Subseasonal-to-interannual variability of rainfall over New Caledonia (SW Pacific). Climate Dynamics 46, 2449–2468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Needham, JF, Chambers, J, Fisher, R, Knox, R and Koven, CD (2020) Forest responses to simulated elevated CO2 under alternate hypotheses of size- and age-dependent mortality. Global Change Biology 26, 5734–5753.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newbery, DM, Chuyong, GB, Zimmermann, L and Praz, C (2006) Seedling survival and growth of three ectomycorrhizal caesalpiniaceous tree species in a Central African rain forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 22, 499–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newbery, DM, van der Burgt, XM and Moravie, M-A (2004) Structure and inferred dynamics of a large grove of Microberlinia bisulcata trees in central African rain forest: The possible role of periods of multiple disturbance events. Journal of Tropical Ecology 20, 131–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newbery, DM, van der Burgt, XM, Worbes, M and Chuyong, GB (2013) Transient dominance in a central African rain forest Ecological Monographs 83, 339–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogden, J (1985) An introduction to plant demography with special reference to New Zealand trees. New Zealand Journal of Botany 23, 751–772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pastur, GM, Lencinas, MV, Cellini, JM and Mundo, I (2007) Diameter growth: can live trees decrease? Forestry 80, 83–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearse, IS, Koenig, WD and Kelly, D (2016) Mechanisms of mast seeding: resources, weather, cues, and selection. New Phytologist 212, 546–562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peña-Claros, M (2003) Changes in forest structure and species composition during secondary forest succession in the Bolivian Amazon. Biotropica 35, 450–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poorter, L, Zuidema, PA, Peña-Claros, M and Boot, RGA (2005) A monocarpic tree species in a polycarpic world: how can Tachigali vasquezii maintain itself so successfully in a tropical rain forest community? Journal of Ecology 93, 268–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team (2016) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org.Google Scholar
Read, J, Evans, R, Sanson, GD, Kerr, S and Jaffré, T (2011) Wood properties and trunk allometry of co-occurring rainforest canopy trees in a cyclone-prone environment. American Journal of Botany 98, 1762–1772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Read, J and Jaffré, T (2013) Population dynamics of canopy trees in New Caledonian rain forests: are monodominant Nothofagus (Nothofagaceae) forests successional to mixed rain forests? Journal of Tropical Ecology 29, 485–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Read, J, McCoy, S and Jaffré, T (2015) Shade-tolerance of seedlings of rain-forest trees: monodominants vs. subordinates and episodic vs. continuous regenerators. Journal of Tropical Ecology 31, 541–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Read, J, McCoy, S, Jaffré, T, Sanson, G and Logan, M (2017) Growth and biomass allocation in seedlings of rain-forest trees in New Caledonia: monodominants vs. subordinates and episodic vs. continuous regenerators. Journal of Tropical Ecology 33, 128–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Read, J, Sanson, GD, Burd, M and Jaffré, T (2008) Mass flowering and parental death in the regeneration of Cerberiopsis candelabra (Apocynaceae), a long-lived monocarpic tree in New Caledonia. American Journal of Botany 95, 558–567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Read, J, Sanson, GD, Jaffré, T and Burd, M (2006) Does tree size influence timing of flowering in Cerberiopsis candelabra (Apocynaceae), a long-lived monocarpic rain-forest tree? Journal of Tropical Ecology 22, 621–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimer, P and Reimer, R (2004) CALIBomb radiocarbon calibration. http://calib.org/CALIBomb/ Google Scholar
Stephenson, NL, van Mantgem, PJ, Bunn, AG, Bruner, H, Harmon, ME, O’Connell, KB, Urban, DL and Franklin, JF (2011) Causes and implications of the correlation between forest productivity and tree mortality rates. Ecological Monographs 81, 527–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, J and Hope, G (2005) A comparison of late Quaternary forest changes in New Caledonia and northeastern Australia. Quaternary Research 64, 372–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Takeno, K (2016) Stress-induced flowering: the third category of flowering response. Journal of Experimental Botany 67, 4925–4934.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Terry, JP, Kostaschuk, RA and Wotling, G (2008) Features of tropical cyclone-induced flood peaks on Grande Terre, New Caledonia. Water and Environment Journal 22, 177–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, H (2013) Senescence, ageing and death of the whole plant. New Phytologist 197, 696–711.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomas, SC (2011) Age-related changes in tree growth and functional biology: The role of reproduction. In Meinzer, FC, Lachenbruch B, Dawson, TE (eds) Size- and Age-Related Changes in Tree Structure and Function. Dordrecht: Tree Physiology, vol 4. Springer.Google Scholar
Tissue, DT and Nobel, PS (1990) Carbon relations of flowering in a semelparous clonal desert perennial. Ecology 71, 273–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valette, J (2006) Chroniques des Terres Rouges. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. 192 pp.Google Scholar
Veillon, JM (1971) Une Apocynacée monocarpique de Nouvelle-Calédonie Cerberiopsis candelabrum Vieill. Adansonia, ser 2, 11, 625–639.Google Scholar
Vincent, L, Genthon, P, Stievenard, M, Nasi, R and Masson-Delmotte, V (2007) Tree-rings and the climate of New Caledonia (SW Pacific). Preliminary results from Araucariaceae. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 253, 477–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welden, CW, Hewett, SW, Hubbell, SP and Foster, RB (1991) Sapling survival, growth, and recruitment: relationship to canopy height in a neotropical forest. Ecology 72, 35–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, SJ, Kitajima, K, Kraft, NJB, Reich, PB, Wright, IJ, Bunker, DE, Condit, R, Dalling, JW, Davies, SJ, Díaz, S, Engelbrecht, BMJ, Harms, KE, Hubbell, SP, Marks, CO, Ruiz-Jaen, MC, Salvador, CM and Zanne, AE (2010). Functional traits and the growth–mortality trade-off in tropical trees. Ecology 91, 3664–3674.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young, TP (1985) Lobelia telekii herbivory, mortality, and size at reproduction: variation with growth rate. Ecology 66, 1879–1883.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Read et al. supplementary material

Read et al. supplementary material 1

Download Read et al. supplementary material(File)
File 65.5 KB
Supplementary material: File

Read et al. supplementary material

Read et al. supplementary material 2

Download Read et al. supplementary material(File)
File 112.4 KB