Wirong Chanthorn

The search for simple principles that underlie the spatial structure and dynamics of plant communities is a long-standing challenge in ecology1, 2, 3, 4, 5–6. In particular, the relationship between species coexistence and the spatial distribution of plants is challenging to resolve in species-rich communities7, 8–9. Here we present a comprehensive...

Tropical forests and woodlands are key components of the global carbon and water cycles. Yet, how climate change affects these biogeochemical cycles is poorly understood because of scarce long-term observations of tropical tree growth. The recent rise in tropical tree-ring studies may help to fill this gap, but a large-scale quantitative analysis o...

Despite a long tradition in ecology of studying tree species assembly and its potential drivers in tropical forest communities, little information exists with respect to lianas (woody climbers), the second most abundant life form of woody plants in tropical forests. Lianas influence forest diversity and stability and provide critical resources for...

accurate mapping and monitoring of tropical forests aboveground biomass (aGB) is crucial to design effective carbon emission reduction strategies and improving our understanding of Earth's carbon cycle. However, existing large-scale maps of tropical forest aGB generated through combinations of Earth Observation (EO) and forest inventory data show m...

The core principle shared by most theories and models of succession is that, following a major disturbance, plant–environment feedback dynamics drive a directional change in the plant community. The most commonly studied feedback loops are those in which the regrowth of the plant community causes changes to the abiotic (e.g. soil nutrients) or biot...

The core principle shared by most theories and models of succession is that plant-environment (PE) feedback dynamics drive a directional change in the plant community, following a major disturbance. The most commonly studied feedback loops are those in which the regrowth of the plant community causes changes to the biotic (e.g., dispersers) or abio...

In many disturbed terrestrial landscapes, a subset of native generalist vertebrates thrives. The population trends of these disturbance-tolerant species may be driven by multiple factors, including habitat preferences, foraging opportunities (including crop raiding or human refuse), lower mortality when their predators are persecuted (the 'human sh...

The complex spatial structure and dynamics of ecological communities continue to defy explanation by simple principles despite decades of attention from ecologists and theoreticians. For example, the relationship between plant spatial distributions and species coexistence is often challenging to resolve in empirical settings. By analysing the spati...

There is increasing evidence that intraspecific trait variation plays a role in governing rates of ecosystem functioning. While wood traits such as wood specific gravity (WSG) and wood carbon concentration (WCC) are key drivers of forest aboveground carbon (AGC) stocks, the sources of intraspecific variation in these wood traits and the consequence...

Lianas are predicted to perform better than trees during seasonal drought among tropical forests, which has substantial implications for tree and forest dynamics. Here, we use whole-plant trait comparison to test whether lianas allocated on the resource acquisitive end of the continuum of woody plant strategies. We measured morphological and biomas...

Seed size is a key trait for understanding and predicting ecological processes in a plant community. In a tropical forest, trees and lianas are major components driving ecosystem function and biogeochemical processes. However, seed ecological research on both components remains limited, particularly phylogenetic patterns and relationships with othe...

As tropical deforestation and forest degradation accelerate, carbon-credit trading could provide a financial incentive to preserve and regenerate forests. Since carbon trading relies on the accurate quantification of carbon stocks, allometric equations are urgently needed to derive above-ground dry biomass (AGB) from easily measured variables. Few...

Tropical forests play important roles in global carbon cycling. Tree-ring analysis can provide important information for understanding long-term trends in carbon-fixation capacity under climate change. However, tree-ring studies in tropical regions are limited. We carried out a tree-ring analysis to investigate the dendrochronological potential of...

Soil respiration (SR) in forests contributes significant carbon dioxide emissions from terrestrial ecosystems and is highly sensitive to environmental changes, including soil temperature, soil moisture, microbial community, surface litter, and vegetation type. Indeed, a small change in SR may have large impacts on the global carbon balance, further...

Abstract Forest biomass estimation at large scale is challenging and generally entails large uncertainty in tropical regions. With their wall‐to‐wall coverage ability, passive remote sensing signals are frequently used to extrapolate field estimates of forest aboveground biomass (AGB). However, studies often use limited reference data and/or flawed...

Deforestation has created heterogeneous patches of old-growth and secondary forests throughout Southeast Asia, posing challenges for understanding the hydrological and carbon cycles. In addition to changes in species composition, environmental conditions differ across successional stages which in turn can influence forest water use and productivity...

Frugivory and seed dispersal are key processes that shape both plant and animal communities, they are important in the maintenance and regeneration of forest ecosystems while threatened by environmental changes. This study investigated the frugivores and environmental factors affecting animal visitation and fruit consumption of the evergreen tree B...

Half of Asian tropical forests were disturbed in the last century resulting in the dominance of secondary forests in Southeast Asia. However, the rate at which biomass accumulates during the recovery process in these forests is poorly understood. We studied a forest landscape located in Khao Yai National Park (Thailand) that experienced strong dist...

Half of Asian tropical forests were disturbed in the last century resulting in the dominance of secondary forests in Southeast Asia. However, the rate at which biomass accumulates during the recovery process in these forests is poorly understood. We studied a forest landscape located in Khao Yai National Park (Thailand) that experienced strong dist...

Recent studies have suggested that defaunation of large-bodied frugivores reduces above-ground carbon storage in tropical forests of South America and Africa, but not, or less so, in Southeast Asian tropical forests. Here we analyze the issue using the seed dispersal network (data of interaction between trees and animal seed dispersers) and forest...

Symbiotic nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees can provide large quantities of new N to ecosystems, but only if they are sufficiently abundant. The overall abundance and latitudinal abundance distributions of N‐fixing trees are well characterised in the Americas, but less well outside the Americas. Here, we characterised the abundance of N‐fixing trees in a n...

Ecological theories assume that ecological processes change during stand development. This change should be reflected in patterns of tree and crown allometries, stand demography and community composition. Empirical tests of these predictions have largely concentrated on temperate forests. Here, we ask whether these expectations also hold in tropica...

Seed dispersal by frugivores, particularly primates, plays an important role in structuring and maintaining tree diversity in tropical forests. However, little is known about the effect of frugivores on the diversity of saplings and large trees. We used detailed census data from the fully mapped 30‐ha Mo Singto forest dynamics plot in Thailand toge...

As tropical forests are complex systems, they tend to be modelled either roughly via scaling relationships or in a detailed manner as high-dimensional systems with many variables. We propose an approach which lies between the two whereby succession in a tropical forest is viewed as a trajectory in the configuration space of a dynamical system with...

A gap remains in our understanding of how host-specific fungal pathogens impact negative density dependence (NDD). Here, we investigated survival of Cinnamomum subavenium Miq. seedlings, the dominant canopy species in a seasonal tropical evergreen forest, Thailand. It is infected by a host-specific fungus that is easily identifiable in the field. W...

Modern agriculture tends to be more intensive aiming to maximize a yield per area, on the other hand, causing several environmental problems such as globally declining of soil fertility. Fallow is a possible practice that has a capability to minimize this problem. Here, we therefore conducted the experiment to compare the effects of intensive and n...

As seeds are the only movable stage in the plant life-cycle, their dispersal determines the chances of recruitment and survival away from the parent trees and the distribution of the next generation. We studied the light- demanding tree, Choerospondias axillaris (Anacardiaceae), whose pyrenes ("seeds") are dispersed mainly by deer and gibbons, to d...