The interspecific demographic trade-off between growth and survival rates may contribute to diversity maintenance in forest communities. Such negative demographic association is believed to arise from interspecific variations across co-occurring tree species along a continuum of ecological strategies in resource allocation. For example, co-occurring species range from those that grow slowly and survive well in resource-poor environments to those that grow quickly but have low survival rates in resource-rich environments. However, it is not known when in what environments and what differences in species traits lead to negative demographic associations.
　　　　　We examined how the relationships between traits and demographic associations change with stem sizes and/or census periods with varying conditions of climate events (frequency of strong wind and drought intensity) across 45 co-occurring woody species using 23-years growth and survival records in a warm temperate rain forest in Yakushima Island, Japan. We developed hierarchical Bayesian models of relative growth rates and survival rate, including leaf traits, wood density, and 95-percentile maximum size as explanatory variables. Then relationships between estimated trait-mediated demographic associations and an index of climate events were tested using five census periods.