Shade tolerance, fruiting phenology and Janzen-Connell effects in Amazonian palms

The Janzen-Connell (JC) hypothesis proposes that individual plants of the same tropical rainforest tree species are more likely to attract specialist natural enemies when they grow close together, thereby resulting in community-level diversity. Choo et al. study two Neotropical palm species (Astrocaryum murmuru and Attalea phalerata) using seed predation experiments and spatial analyses.

They show that variation in the strength of JC effects across life-stages is consistent with differences in shade-tolerance and fruiting phenology across species. The authors infer that differences in these life history traits may also help explain variation in the strength of JC effects across whole communities.