Mendieta-Leiva, GBuckley, HLZotz, G2023-11-232023-11-232021-11-28Journal of Ecology, ISSN: 0022-0477 (Print); 1365-2745 (Online), WILEY, 110(3), 553-568. doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.138170022-04771365-2745http://hdl.handle.net/10292/16993Understanding the degree to which deterministic and stochastic processes drive community assembly is an ongoing focus of research in community ecology. This effort is strongly biased towards ground-rooted plants, resulting in a limited understanding of communities of other life-forms, such as structurally dependent plants. Vascular epiphytes are sessile organisms growing non-parasitically on three-dimensional dynamic patches, their host plants. Since negative biotic interactions are thought to play a minor role in vascular epiphyte assembly, in some forests, epiphytes are fascinating model organisms to understand the prevalence of environmental filtering in shaping community assembly. We assessed the contribution of deterministic processes on the temporal dynamics of vascular epiphyte assemblages by tracking the direction of changes in composition, species richness and abundance in time at different ecological and spatial scales. We made use of a globally unique dataset from a lowland forest in Panama. We predict that if niche-based mechanisms dominate, (a) temporal changes will be directional and (b) differences in the species composition of epiphyte assemblages will be primarily related to host plant characteristics and, to a lesser degree, to the distance between host trees. We show that temporal changes in vascular epiphyte assemblages were directional at different ecological scales, such as the forest patch, host species or individual tree assemblages. Epiphyte assemblages on host trees became more similar in their composition over time than expected by chance, and these changes were not due to homogenisation. While host characteristics were related to these directional changes, host structure rather than host identity was more strongly related to variation in assemblage dissimilarity, while spatial distance among trees was of minor importance. The observed directionality was primarily due to environmental filtering. This study provides the first evidence that niche-based mechanisms dominate the dynamics of vascular epiphyte assemblages. Analysing temporal patterns of vascular epiphyte assemblages is a first important step towards understanding the relative importance of deterministic processes for diversity maintenance of one of the most diverse plant groups in the tropics. Synthesis. Directionality in the temporal changes of epiphyte assemblages suggests that niche-based mechanisms dominate these temporal changes. Host size over host identity is the most important environmental filter for epiphyte assemblages establishment.© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Science & TechnologyLife Sciences & BiomedicinePlant SciencesEcologyEnvironmental Sciences & Ecologycommunity dynamicsdirectional changesdeterminismenvironmental filteringhost specieshost structuretemporal changeslong-term changesPALM SOCRATEA-EXORRHIZALONG-TERM CHANGESSTOCHASTIC-PROCESSESCOMMUNITY STRUCTURELOWLAND FORESTTREE SIZEDYNAMICSNICHEMETAPOPULATIONVEGETATION31 Biological Sciences3103 Ecology05 Environmental Sciences06 Biological Sciences07 Agricultural and Veterinary SciencesEcology3103 EcologyJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1111/1365-2745.13817