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Factors Influencing The Distribution And Structure Of Tropical Vascular Epiphyte Communities At Multiple Scales, Carrie Woods

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Understanding the factors that determine species distributions is a central question in ecology. Niche-based theories stress the importance of environmental heterogeneity in influencing species distributions while neutral-based theories emphasize the effects of dispersal limitation. The relative importance of these factors in influencing species distributions may depend on spatial scale - deterministic factors may be more important at small spatial scales where fine-scale habitat factors become more relevant and stochastic factors may be more important at larger spatial scales where dispersal limitation becomes more relevant. I examined the influence of deterministic and stochastic factors on the distribution and structure of vascular …