Demographic tradeoffs predict tropical forest dynamics

Assessing vegetation feedbacks with the climate system and planning sustainable management in tropical forests requires efficient, yet accurate, predictions of the joint dynamics of hundreds of tree species. With increasing information on tropical tree life-histories, our predictive understanding is no longer limited by species data, but by the ability of existing models to make use of it. Using a demographic forest model, we show that the basal area and compositional changes during forest succession in a Neotropical forest can be accurately predicted by representing tropical tree diversity (hundreds of species) with only five functional groups spanning two essential tradeoffs - the growth-survival and stature-recruitment tradeoffs. This data-driven modeling framework substantially improves our ability to predict consequences of anthropogenic impacts on tropical forests.