Spatial association of bamboos with trees in a commercial tree plantation forest in Myanmar

Abstract Bamboos are mainly distributed in subtropical to tropical areas. Bamboos provide numerous ecosystem services, while the expansion of bamboo gives negative impacts on forest ecosystems. Despite big impacts of bamboos on a forest ecosystem, ecological characteristics of bamboo remain poorly understood. The spatial distributional patterns of three bamboo species, Cephalostachyum pergracile, Bambusa polymorpha, and Dinochloa maclellandii, were studied in a commercial tree plantation of native deciduous tree species in the Bago Mountains, Myanmar. A point process analysis revealed a clumped distribution for each bamboo species. The distributional overlapping of the species was analysed for every pair of two species. The distribution of C. pergracile was little overlapped with those of D. maclellandii and B. polymorpha. Cephalostachyum pergracile was significantly more abundant on gently sloping ridges, whereas D. maclellandii was more abundant on a steeply sloping site. Bambusa polymorpha did not show these patterns with topography. The exclusive distribution of C. pergracile and D. maclellandii may be, at least partly, explained by the opposite topographic preferences of the species. Cephalostachyum pergracile tended to be found far from large trees that cast shade, although B. polymorpha tended to be found with large trees, suggesting that B. polymorpha may be more shade tolerant than C. pergracile. The difference in shade tolerance may contribute to the exclusive distribution of the species. The habitat preference information obtained in this study will contribute to sound bamboo management practices in Myanmar and enable bamboo population sizes to be increased through creation of favourable habitats in forests.