Such difference in recruitment fluctuation, combined with evidence of greater competitive ability in the rarer species of each pair, indicates a difference in covariance between the environment and competition between rare and common species. Since species-specific environmental response and buffered population growth can be naturally assumed, their finding strongly suggests that the storage effect operates in this tropical deciduous forest so as to maintain the coexistence between different tree species. Further work with these species has shown that the storage dynamic is a pairwise, competitive relationship, between congeneric species pairs, and possibly extending as successively nested pairs within a genus.
This disparity in recruitment fluctuations, combined with evidence of greater competitiveness in the less common species of each pair, implies a difference in covariance between the environment and competition between rare and abundant species. Given that species-specific environmental responses and buffered population growth can be naturally assumed, their discovery suggests that the storage effect operates to maintain coexistence among diverse tree species in this tropical deciduous forest.