Data from: Tropical trees in a wind-exposed island ecosystem: height-diameter allometry and size at onset of maturity

1. Tropical tree species adapted to high wind environments might be
expected to differ systematically in terms of stem allometry and
life-history patterns, as compared with species found in less windy
forests. We quantified height-diameter (H-D) allometries and relative size
at onset of maturity (RSOM) for rainforest tree and tree fern species
native to Dominica, West Indies, an island that experiences some of the
highest average wind speeds pantropically. 2. H-D allometries for 17
Dominican angiosperm tree species were strongly concave on a log-log scale
with asymptotic heights ranging from 9-32 m among species, averaging 25 m
for canopy trees. H-D allometries for species-pooled data deviated
strongly from recorded patterns for other tropical forest trees:
asymptotic heights for trees in Dominica were 30-116% lower than those
recorded for continental rainforest trees in Australia, South America,
Africa, and Southeast Asia. In a subset of canopy trees sampled in steep,
sheltered valleys, heights were 12-26% larger at a given diameter, and
approached those observed in other tropical regions, suggesting large
phenotypic responses of H-D allometries to wind conditions. 3. RSOM
(quantified as the ratio of height at onset of reproduction to asymptotic
maximum height) for Dominican angiosperm species was highly variable,
ranging from 0.23-0.89 (mean 0.54), similar to patterns observed in
Malaysia and Panama; very low RSOM values were estimated for two tree fern
species. Pooling data from Dominica with published values from other
tropical forests, we observed a significant negative correlation between
RSOM and wood density. 4. Synthesis: Our data suggest that wind regimes
are a critical determinant of height-diameter (H-D) allometries of
tropical trees at both the local and global scale. Although we found no
evidence for a systematic differences in reproductive onset related to
wind regime, RSOM was negatively correlated with species’ wood density,
suggesting that more shade-tolerant tree species show a longer period of
gradually increasing reproductive allocation through ontogeny.