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Tropical forests are globally important carbon sinks and are threatened by increasing disturbances. However, prediction of tropical tree demography is often biased in terrestrial biosphere models, particularly, understory tree growth and survival are often underestimated. This underestimate can have cascading effects on model projections of long-term biomass dynamics and forest resilience to disturbances. Sub-canopy trees in tropical forests demonstrate marked trait plasticity in response to light limitation, including lower respiration rate, larger specific leaf area (SLA), and longer leaf lifespan. However, it remains unknown whether these physiological effects of light plasticity fully account for the modeling bias in predicted tropical tree demography and how such effects translate into ecosystem-scale impact on tropical forest structure and dynamics. Here, we quantified light plasticity of four traits based on a dataset …