%0 Journal Article %T ESTIMACI¨®N DEL CRECIMIENTO DIAM¨¦TRICO, DE Anacardium excelsum (KUNTH) SKEELS, POR MEDIO DE MODELOS NO LINEALES, EN BOSQUES NATURALES DEL DEPARTAMENTO DEL TOLIMA %A Lozano B. %A Luis Alfredo %A Franco O. %A Nathaly %A Bonilla V. %A Jeimy Lorena %J Bolet¨ªn Cient¨ªfico. Centro de Museos. Museo de Historia Natural %D 2012 %I Scientific Electronic Library Online %X it is important to assess trees growth in the forest both economically and environmentally, because of their usefulness to estimate and predict forest efficiency (vanclay, 1994). this paper presents the results of growth study carried out during four diametric measurements between 2008 and 2010, to 27 caracol¨ª (anacardium excelsum kunth-skeels) individuals in four permanent research plots located in the natural forest in the municipalities of mariquita, venadillo, alvarado and ibagu¨¦, department of tolima. the current annual increment (cai), the species average diameter as well as the time the species took to reach the asymptotic diameter were calculated using von bertalanffy's non-linear models, the logistic model and gompertz' model, and the diametric growth profiles were compared using hotelling's statistic t2 . the species presented an average cai in the 1,40 cm/year diameter. in analyzing the diametric growth of the species using von bertalanffy and gompertz's models showed that a 10 cm diameter individual takes 180 years in reaching 113 cm, with a cai rate from 0,045 to 0,046 cm/year respectively while with the logistic model the species would take 40 years less than the ones aforementioned with a 0,065 cm/year cai. %K tropical forest %K caracol¨ª %K forest epidometry %K growth models %K forest performance. %U http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0123-30682012000100002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en