Seed data per trap for 18 Barro Colorado Island tree species for the period 2008-2012

S. Joseph Wright and Osvaldo Calderón

This seed production dataset contains information on total seed captures per trap for the period 2008/01/02 until 2012/05/16 for 18 tree species from Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Seed captures are observed in 200 seed traps located in a stratified random manner along trails within the 50-ha Forest Dynamics Plot (FDP) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and 50 additional traps established in gaps (Puerta-Piñero et al. 2013). See dataset: DOI: 10.5479/data.bci.20130603. Seeds were identified to species and counted weekly (see Wright et al. 1999). Seed production was estimated as the total observed seed rain (total seed arrival over the entire period in 200 0.5 m2 seed traps), combining mature fruits and diaspores as well as fruits with damage (e.g. with insect emergence holes) and immature fruits as these contain viable seeds (Dalling et al., 1998). Fruits were multiplied with the average number of seeds per fruit. Seed number per fruit were estimated from field samples, the value (1500) for Cecropia insignis is obtained from literature (Dalling et al., 1998). 

Column
trap	trap number. An integer between 1 to 200 & between 300 to 349 (the latter signifies later established gap traps)
matureFruit		mature fruits (an integer count)
diaspore		single diaspores (an integer count)
immatureFruit		immature fruit (an integer count)
damagedFruit		damaged fruit (an integer count) 
seedeq			seeds per fruit (mean number of seeds per fruit)
genus			genus name
species			species name


References
Dalling, J. W., M. D. Swaine, and Nancy C. Garwood. "Dispersal patterns and seed bank dynamics of pioneer trees in moist tropical forest." Ecology 79.2 (1998): 564-578.

Puerta-Piñero, C., Muller-Landau, H.C., Calderon, O. & Wright, S.J. (2013) Seed arrival in tropical forest tree fall gaps. Ecology, 94, 1552–1562.

Wright, S., Carrasco, C., Calderon, O. & Paton, S. (1999). The El Niño Southern Oscillation, variable fruit production, and famine in a tropical forest. Ecology.