ABSTRACT
Tropical monodominant forests have been classically defi ned as areas of forest where one tree species comprises >60% of the stems or basal area of canopy trees (Torti et al. 2001). These forests occur throughout all tropical regions (Fig. 1) and have been noted as interesting deviations from the more extensive high-diversity rain forests (Leigh et al. 2004). A number of mechanisms have been suggested to explain their existence and persistence among the mosaics of highly diverse forest (Connell and Lowman 1989, Hart 1990, Torti and Coley 1999), however, a single explanation for tropical monodominance does not suffi ce (Torti et al. 2001, Peh et al. 2011). It is now widely accepted that multiple mechanisms must be operating simultaneously that lead to feedbacks, which enable a monodominant tree species to persist and maintain site dominance (McGuire 2008).
