A recent increase in published studies of lianas has been paralleled by a proliferation of protocols for censusing lianas. This article seeks to increase uniformity in liana inventories by providing specific recommendations for the determination of which taxa to include, the location of diameter measurement points on individual stems, the setting of minimum stem diameter cutoffs, the treatment of multiple‐stemmed and rooted clonal groups, and the measurement of noncylindrical stems. Use of more uniform liana censusing protocols may facilitate comparison of independently collected data sets and further our understanding of global patterns in liana abundance, diversity, biomass, and dynamics.

SignificanceIdentifying and explaining regional differences in tropical forest dynamics, structure, diversity, and composition are critical for anticipating region-specific responses to global environmental change. Floristic classifications are of fundamental importance for these efforts. Here we provide a global tropical forest classification that is explicitly based on community evolutionary similarity, resulting in identification of five major tropical forest regions and their relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. African and American forests are grouped, reflecting their former western Gondwanan connection, while Indo-Pacific forests range from eastern Africa and Madagascar to Australia and the Pacific. The connection between northern-hemisphere Asian and American forests is confirmed, while Dry forests are identified as a single tropical biome.

Changes in tree, liana, and understory plant diversity and community composition in five tropical rain forest fragments varying in area (18–2600 ha) and disturbance levels were studied on the Valparai plateau, Western Ghats. Systematic sampling using small quadrats (totaling 4 ha for trees and lianas, 0.16 ha for understory plants) enumerated 312 species in 103 families: 1968 trees (144 species), 2250 lianas (60 species), and 6123 understory plants (108 species). Tree species density, stem density, and basal area were higher in the three larger (> 100 ha) rain forest fragments but were negatively correlated with disturbance scores rather than area per se. Liana species density, stem density, and basal area were higher in moderately disturbed and lower in heavily disturbed fragments than in the three larger fragments. Understory species density was highest in the highly disturbed 18‐ha fragment, due to weedy invasive species occurring with rain forest plants. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and Mantel tests revealed significant and similar patterns of floristic variation suggesting similar effects of disturbance on community compositional change for the three life‐forms. The five fragments encompassed substantial plant diversity in the regional landscape, harbored at least 70 endemic species (3.21% of the endemic flora of the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot), and supported many endemic and threatened animals. The study indicates the significant conservation value of rain forest fragments in the Western Ghats, signals the need to protect them from further disturbances, and provides useful benchmarks for restoration and monitoring efforts.

Plinio Sist 10,88 | Bonaventure Sonke 60 | J. Daniel Soto 21 | Cintia Rodrigues de Souza 24 | Juliana Stropp 89 | Martin J. P. Sullivan 35 | Ben Swanepoel 34 | Hans ter Steege 25,90 | John Terborgh 91,92 | Nicolas Texier 93 | Takeshi Toma 94 | Renato Valencia 95 | Luis Valenzuela 75 | Leandro Valle Ferreira 96 | Fernando Cornejo Valverde 97 | Tinde R. Van Andel 25 | Rodolfo Vasque 77 | Hans Verbeeck 61 | Pandi Vivek 22 | Abstract Aim:Large tropical trees form the interface between ground and airborne observations, offering a unique opportunity to capture forest properties remotely and to investigate their variations on broad scales. However, despite rapid development of metrics to characterize the forest canopy from remotely sensed data, a gap remains between aerial and field inventories. To close this gap, we propose a new pan-tropical model to predict plot-level forest structure properties and biomass from only the largest trees.Location: Pan-tropical.Time period: Early 21st century. Major taxa studied: Woody plants.Methods: Using a dataset of 867 plots distributed among 118 sites across the tropics, we tested the prediction of the quadratic mean diameter, basal area, Lorey's height, community wood density and aboveground biomass (AGB) from the ith largest trees. Results:Measuring the largest trees in tropical forests enables unbiased predictions of plot-and site-level forest structure. The 20 largest trees per hectare predicted quadratic mean diameter, basal area, Lorey's height, community wood density and AGB with 12, 16, 4, 4 and 17.7% of relative error, respectively. Most of the remaining error in biomass prediction is driven by differences in the proportion of total biomass held in medium-sized trees (50-70 cm diameter at breast height), which shows some continental dependency, with American tropical forests presenting the highest proportion of total biomass in these intermediate-diameter classes relative to other continents. Main conclusions:Our approach provides new information on tropical forest structure and can be used to generate accurate field estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks to support the calibration and validation of current and forthcoming space missions. It will reduce the cost of field inventories and contribute to scientific understanding of tropical forest ecosystems and response to climate change. K E Y W O R D Scarbon, climate change, forest structure, large trees, pan-tropical, REDD+, tropical forest ecology