ABSTRACT
For many years, ecologists viewed tropical forests as fragile ecosystems that are easily broken or damaged (Richards, 1964; Farnworth and Golley, 1974; Ng, 1983). This view was largely based on the belief that old-growth tropical forests were ancient and pristine ecosystems (Clark, 1996) and that their high biological diversity was a consequence of long-term stability and climate favourability. We now understand that many tropical forests persist despite historical legacies of human occupation and management (Bush and Colinvaux, 1994; Piperno, 2007; Denham et al., 2009) and they are resilient to a range of natural and human large-scale disturbances (Lugo, 1995; Gómez-Pompa and Kaus, 1999; Lugo et al., 2002; Chazdon, 2003). We also now know that the high species richness and heterogeneity of tropical forests cannot be attributed to the long-term climatic stability of these ecosystems (Colinvaux, 1987; Bush and Colinvaux, 1990), but are emergent properties of species adaptations, interspecific interactions, coevolution and feedbacks among ecological processes at multiple levels.
