Tropical tree communities in regions with seasonal climate usually adjust leaf-fall, flowering and fruiting phenology to climate seasonality. Here we monitored a tree community over a 4-year period in order to assess the relationship between the number of species presenting leaf fall, flower and fruit and annual variation in day length, precipitation and temperature. Moreover, we asked whether the three phenological variables have the same patterns in successive years. Simple regression analyses showed that the number of species shedding leaves was negatively related to the three environmental variables during the four years, with day length and temperature as the best predictors. There was also a relationship between day length and the number of species flowering and fruiting, while rainfall and temperature were only related to these phenophases in some years. The circular statistics indicate highly significant seasonality only for leaf fall, whereas for flowering and fruiting significant seasonal patterns were not detected. The number of species in leaf fall was correlated between all successive years. However, the number of species in flower and fruit was not significantly correlated between 2003 and 2004. Overall, our results suggest that leaf fall is highly predictable over time. On the contrary, flowering and fruiting may present year-to-year variation as a result of climatic anomalies such as the high temperatures detected in 2004. These variations may be relevant to understand the effects of climate change on seasonal forests in long-term studies.
day length; Atlantic forest; climate changes; seasonality
