Integrating ontogeny and ontogenetic dependency into community assembly

To gain more insights into the process influencing forest dynamics in Southern California, we have established the 4ha San Jacinto Forest Dynamics Plot (SJFDP) on the west slope of Mt. San Jacinto in Southern California. This area is adjacent to the University of California James Reserve and is in the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Hall Canyon research natural area. This dataset include three files. Census data is data on every free-standing woody stem (live or dead) greater than 1cm in diameter which has identified to species, mapped, measured, and tagged for long-term monitoring. Seedling data includes data from 256 1m2 plots where every seedling woody stem less than 1m tall has been identified to species, mapped, measured, and tagged for long-term monitoring. Envrionmental data includes soil and topographic variables that were collected within each of 100 20x20m quadrats withint he SJFDP., To quantify woody species adult composition across the SJFDP, we subdivided the SJFDP into 100 20x20 all free-standing stems of woody species greater than 1cm diameter at breast height (DBH) that have been tagged, identified, measured, and mapped following CTFS-ForestGEO protocols (Condit, 1998). To quantify woody species seedling composition across the SJFDP, we surveyed the central 64 20x20m quadrats (out of 100 total quadrats) in 2021, leaving a 20-meter buffer between seedling plots and the edge of the SJFDP. The purpose of the buffer was to ensure that adult composition is quantified for all of the 8 quadrats surrounding every quadrat in which seedling composition was quantified so that we can more accurately assess the influence of adult composition on seedling composition. To estimate seedling composition within each of the central 64 quadrats, we established four 1m2 subplots (n=256 subplots). Each subplot was positioned 7m from the corner of each quadrat and aligned on a 45-deg...,