Growth–survival trade‐off in temperate trees is weak and restricted to late‐successional stages

1. Life-history strategies emerge from eco-evolutionary constraints, where organisms allocate limited resources to growth, survival, and reproduction, resulting in trade-offs such as the growth–survival trade-off. There is still a limited understanding of whether and how disturbance regimes and successional stages might mediate such trade-offs, with potential consequences for species population dynamics and community assembly.

2. Here, we investigate how disturbances shape the growth–survival trade-off by comparing early and late-successional forest stands across the eastern United States. Using large-scale sampling to capture the realised niche of 68 temperate species, we estimated species-specific mortality probabilities under zero growth (a proxy for resource-poor environments) applying a Bayesian multilevel modelling framework. We tested trade-offs between these estimates and species' maximum growth capacity (a proxy for resource-rich environments), within and across early and late-successional stands.

3. Overall, we found a weak growth–survival trade-off among temperate tree species (R² = 0.07). No clear evidence of this trade-off was found in early successional stands (R² = 0.02), while late-successional stands showed a relatively stronger—though still weak—positive association between species' maximum growth and mortality under zero growth conditions (R² = 0.17). Disturbances therefore seem to mediate a filtering of tree life-history strategies. Consequently, an increase in disturbance rates or changes in their regime could disrupt the growth–survival trade-off in temperate forests.

4. Synthesis: Life-history strategies arise from eco-evolutionary constraints and can lead to trade-offs like tree growth and survival. While temperate tree species in late-successional or low-disturbance-frequency forests do show a growth–survival trade-off, this trade-off is weak and was not found in early successional or high-disturbance-frequency stands, nor across all stages combined. Our findings highlight a role of disturbances in filtering life-history strategies and their potential impact on forest dynamics and global carbon cycling but also a need to better understand the mediating processes of tree demographic trade-offs.