2 things I’d like to say
1) the biggest thing that people forget about with tropicals is light; plants regulate hormones based on the % they make when it’s light and dark. Whereas we have more light in the summer and less in the winter in temperate areas, places near the equator are in perpetual springtime
2) rainforest soil is generally very depleted. Plants in a rainforest will not anchor themselves to the ground as much, throwing roots out into the composting debris from other trees above the topsoil instead. There’s a lot of videos of people exploring the Amazon and being blown away by roots growing upward and into the walking paths
I think you could consider the soil to be low nutrient, but the nutrients being cycled in the leaf litter and biologically active top layer, including microbes, fungi, tiny animal life etc.
As you say, there is a concentration of feeder roots into this layer.
Also ariel roots for some species.
Many tree species are also heavily buttressed, and others must be anchored enough to stand cyclones, waterlogged soils that expand and lose structure.
Some tropical plant species are also day length sensitive, and only really go into flowering and growth at the equal periods.
We had a very mild winter here last year. Not too cold and warm at night.
A lot of Tropicals and Subtropicals really flushed out better than ever before.
Even Citrus seem to get a much better growth flush when night temps are high and closer to day temps.
There are probably systems for Tropical plants to regulate their growth.
A lot produce fruit and seeds to correspond with the Tropical wet season,
especially those species with short viability seeds that need to hit the wet ground and start growing ASAP.
This is obviously regulated by some mechanism.
Others with hard seeds or animal dispersed seeds, can produce fruit in the drier months.
Are Temperate plants more efficient?
Not really, but they have systems to stop them wasting energy on growth that will succumb to cold.
As many may have seen, deciduous fruit trees are being thrown out of whack by climate change seasonal variably.
There is a lot of off season flowering, early flushing late winter, fruit ripening time shifts etc.
This is playing havoc with commercial growers, who can't predict when fruit will be ripe,
and varieties overlapping each other to markets causing a fruit glut, and labour shortages.