Observed (bold) and predicted species richness for all trees with diameter at breast height (dbh)≥1 cm for the first census in nine tropical forest plots.

Data from Center for Tropical Forest Science [11]. The predicted values of species richness correspond to averages ± std of 100 model simulations for the best estimates of model parameters. H1 is the equitability or standardized Shannon-Weaver diversity for the first census in each forest, L is the lattice size and the parameter values providing the best fit to empirical data where σ is the species' niche width, m is the dispersal rate from outside each neighbourhood and T is the stochasticity parameter.