User:Sbpitcher11/Liana

Article body
As noted by Charles Darwin, because lianas are supported by other plants, they may conserve resources that other plants must allocate to the development of structure and use them instead for growth and reproduction. In general, lianas are detrimental to the trees that support them. Growth rates are lower for trees with lianas; they directly damage hosts by mechanical abrasion and strangulation, render hosts more susceptible to ice and wind damage, and increase the probability that the host tree falls.

New Information
Lianas were spatially clumped in the BCI 50-ha plot - a pattern that could be driven by the strong colonization and regeneration responses of lianas to common forest disturbances, such as the formation of treefall gaps. Because lianas respond rapidly to disturbance [1], [3], [50], [51], treefall gaps may be the foci of liana recruitment [8], [9], and this type of small-scale disturbance may explain the clumped distribution of lianas throughout the forest. The clumped distribution pattern may be strongly influenced by highly clonal liana species (Table 1), which had much higher stem density per cluster and may be more disturbance adapted than less clonal species

For example, if liana increases are driven by increasing disturbance, we would expect more disturbance-adapted and highly clonal liana species to increase in abundance. In contrast, if other mechanisms such as increasing aridity, nitrogen deposition, hunting, or elevated atmospheric CO2 are responsible for liana increases [27], [30], we may expect that both disturbance-adapted and highly shade-tolerant liana species will increase in abundance.