| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 生物學系 === 87 === Kenting high coral reef forest is located at the Kenting High Coral Reef Nature Preserve on the Heng-Chun Peninsula at southern Taiwan. This forest is particular noteworthy because its soil is derived from uplifted coral reef. The soil is very shallow and alkline, thus provide an excellent opportunity to study the adaptive significance of trees as well as the interactions of abiotic (e.g. soil nutrient gradient) and biotic factors (e.g. competition, seed dispersal agents) on the structure and dynamics of this forest.
A 3.25 ha permanent plot was established in 1997 to study the structure and floristic composition of this forest. All woody plants 31 cm DBH were tagged, measured, mapped, and identified to species. In addition, in each 5 x 5 m2 quadrat, we established a 1 x 1 m2 subquadrat to study the seedlings composition of this forest.
A total of 13104 individuals of 80 species were found in the plot. The most common species was Diospyros maritima Blume (Ebenaceae). The family with the largest number of species was Euphorbiaceae. There is no significant difference between different regeneration guilds for the trend of stem diameter distribution. Some species have difficulties regenerate in this forest, especially species showed J-shape size distribution. These species which have difficulties regenerate in this forest are shade-intolerant species.
Only 65% of species were found in the seedlings survey, this may be due to small sample size or low recruitment rate of these species. In addition, common species do not necessarily have an advantage over rare species in terms of number of seedlings. This fact supports that this forest is at an non-equilibrium stage. Our seedling data also indicated that species richness and abundance did not affect by the presence of gaps. This suggests that gaps may not play an important role in the regeneration of Kenting high coral reef forest. Furthermore, our seedlings data showed that in most species, common species and rare species alike, their seedlings died before they reached 30 cm in height. This fact strongly suggested that some forces which affect forest dynamics operate much earlier life cycle.
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