‘Social distancing’ of trees ensures biodiversity in tropical forests, finds study
Adult tropical trees might maintain distances from other members of the same species in a kind of "social distancing" that ensures biodiversity, finds new study.
An aerieal image of the forest in the Panamian island where the study was conducted. (Christian Ziegler/ UT Austin) The saying goes that the Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But based on a new study on a forest in Panama, that may be far from the truth for tropical trees that practice a kind of “social distancing” to ensure biodiversity.
In the study published in the journal Science, researchers combined computational modelling with data collected over a 30-year period and found that adult trees in a Panamian forest were three times as distant from other adults of the same species than would be expected.
The study was collected from a forest research plot located on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal, which according to the University of Texas at Austin, has been studied for the past 100 years. That is where the researchers found that the distance between adult trees of the same species is much higher than their seeds usually travel. The only theoretical explanation for this is that it is something that would prevent young trees from establishing near their parents.
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