Data from: Intra-specific variation in tree growth responses to neighborhood composition and seasonal drought in a tropical forest

1. Functional traits are expected to provide insights into the abiotic and
biotic drivers of plant demography. However, successfully linking traits
to plant demographic performance likely requires the consideration of
important contextual and individual-level information that is often
ignored in trait-based ecology. 2. Here, we modeled 8 years of growth from
1,138 individual trees from 36 tropical rain forest species. We compared
models of tree growth parameterized using individual-level versus species
mean trait data. We also compared models that considered regional
climatic, local biotic and whole-plant allocation contexts to those that
do not. 3. Our analyses show that growth models parameterized using
individual-level trait information outperformed those that used species
mean trait information and that these models often contradicted one
another indicating that the common practice of using species mean trait
data requires more scrutiny. Additionally, we found that models including
climatic, biotic and allocation contexts outperformed those that did not
and provide nuanced insights into the drivers of tree growth in a tropical
forest. 4. Synthesis. Here, we have shown that the development of models
of tree demographic performance upon the basis of traits can be improved
through a consideration of individual-level trait variation as well as
phenotypic and climatic contexts. We highlight that our ability to
understand the drivers of tree population and community structure and
dynamics in current and in future climates will be limited if contextual
and individual-level data remains understudied.