Lianas (woody vines) make an important contribution to the canopy diversity of tropical forests, yet few studies have compared tree and liana diversity over large areas. The CTFS-affiliated forest monitoring plot in Korup, Cameroon is one of the few sites worldwide where large-scale inventories of both trees and lianas have been conducted. Trees and lianas of minimum stem diameter 1.0 cm have been measured and mapped over 10 hectares of forest.

Results/Conclusions

Excluding 15 species of hemiepiphytes and climbing palms, the 10 hectares support 7240 lianas from approximately 205 species. We used several different metrics to compute tree diversity. For species/area comparison, all trees over 1.0 cm diameter in 10 ha comprised 70,600 stems from 367 species, the relatively high tree diversity reflecting the higher stem density. When we compared tree and liana diversity using species/individuals counts, the tree diversity was reduced to 216 species from a sample of 7240 larger trees.  The species/individual curves suggest that tree and liana diversities are very similar in the Korup forest.