Seed germination and seedling recruitment of Dimorphandra mollis Benth. in a Neotropical savanna subjected to prescribed fires Fabian Borghetti & Luciana Aparecida Zago de Andrade & Isabel Belloni Schmidt & Eduardo Rogério Moribe Barbosa Received: 28 June 2018 /Accepted: 22 February 2019 # Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic 2019 Abstract Recruitment in savanna environments repre- sents a high-risk step in a plant ’s life cycle. Dimorphandra mollis Benth (Fabaceae) is a savanna tree species which produces dry fruits holding coat- imposed dormant seeds dispersed late in the dry season. We investigated fire effects on fruit dehiscence, seed dormancy breaking and seed viability, and also moni- tored seedling recruitment and survival for 44 months in a savanna area subjected to biennial controlled fires in central Brazil. Fruits were laid aboveground, and seeds were buried before and after an experimental fire set in August 1999. Fruits started to open after the experimen- tal fire up to the following rainy season. Around one fourth of the seeds removed from these fruits were viable but required scarification to imbibe, indicating that fruits do not totally insulate seeds, and fire does not break seed dormancy. No seedling emerged from buried seeds during the first rainy season after the fire, but fourteen seedlings emerged during the second rainy season. Half of the seedlings died and the other half resprouted after a second experimental fire set during the third dry season. In the third rainy season, thirteen new seedlings emerged, but two died in the fourth dry season. We found that fire was a more determinant constraint to seedling survival than the dry season itself. After 44 months we recovered 27 viable seeds from those initially buried, suggesting that seeds of D. mollis have the potential to establish a persistent seed bank. As expected for savanna trees, we found that D. mollis seeds and seedlings may persist in environ- ments periodically disturbed by fires. Keywords Germination . Recruitment . Fire . Cerrado . Savanna . Seed bank Introduction The transition from seed to seedling is a high-risk period in the life cycle of plants (Fenner and Thompson 2005), and the ability of seeds to tolerate stressful conditions is fundamental for a species to establish a seed bank and recruit under more appropriate conditions for seedling growth (Fenner and Thompson 2005; Salazar et al. 2011). In seasonal environments such as savannas, seeds may remain in the soil for months until the first rains (Williams et al. 2005; Scott et al. 2010). During this time, water deficit (Goldstein et al. 2008), extreme temperatures and fire (Ooi et al. 2012) represent envi- ronmental filters that might strongly reduce the proba- bility of a seed to survive and recruit to an adult form. Folia Geobot https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-019-09338-3 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-019-09338-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. F. Borghetti (*) : E. R. M. Barbosa Departamento de Botânica, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília (DF) 70910, Brazil e-mail: borghetti.fabian@gmail.com L. A. Z. de Andrade Agência Nacional de Águas (ANA), Brasília (DF) 70610, Brazil I. B. Schmidt Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília (DF) 70910, Brazil