Linking patterns and processes of tree community assembly across spatial scales in tropical montane forests

Many studies have tried to assess the role of both deterministic and stochastic processes in community assembly, yet a lack of consensus exists on which processes are more prevalent and at which spatial scales they operate. To shed light on this issue, we tested two nonmutually exclusive, scale‐dependent hypotheses: (1) that competitive exclusion dominates at small spatial scales; and (2) that environmental filtering does so at larger ones. To...