Abstract The primary literature describing the ecology of tropical rain forest trees is vast, yet there are relatively few summaries of their ecological traits, especially from a comparative ecology perspective. Consequently, Turner's effort to do a comparative analysis of the ecology of species from throughout the tropical rain forest is a most welcome one. His primary goal to summarize the ecology of different tropical rainforest trees has resulted in a very well written summarization of their comparative ecology (and structure). He is less complimentary of the results of his effort to find “a new synthesis of the comparative ecology of tropical trees” (p. 247) after summarizing the relevant literature, but perhaps he has done more than he suspects.