COMMUNITY ECOLOGY - ORIGINAL PAPER Early seed fall and seedling emergence: precursors to tropical restoration Henry F. Howe • Yuliana Urincho-Pantaleon • Marine ´s de la Pen ˜ a-Domene • Cristina Martı ´nez-Garza Received: 27 November 2009 / Accepted: 18 May 2010 / Published online: 10 June 2010 Ó Springer-Verlag 2010 Abstract We explore processes of seed immigration and seedling recruitment before an experimental rainforest restoration matures enough to affect either. Twenty-four 30 9 30-m plots were fenced in 12 ha of pasture in 2006. Seeds were collected in ninety-six 1-m -2 seed traps; recruits were censused in *12,000 m 2 in which estab- lishment was allowed. We tested effects of distance from forest, living trees, and stumps of trees cut during site preparation on seed rain in 2007 and effects of these and soil depth on recruits through June 2008. Seed fall and recruitment were not correlated with distance to forest 90– 400 m away, nor to living shade trees outside the 160 9 485-m experimental grid. Recruitment differed for animal- and wind-dispersed species in a topographically complex landscape. Recruitment of wind-dispersed species was random with respect to soil depth or distance to recent stumps. Recruitment of animal-dispersed species was multimodal; partial correlations with number of stumps within 30 m of plots were significant with soil depth held constant (P \ 0.025), as were correlations of recruitment with soil depth with number of stumps held constant (P \ 0.01). Animal-dispersed recruits were often not con- specifics of adults that had been cut, indicating a legacy of attraction by fruiting trees of animals bearing seeds from distant sources. Ecological implications are that recruit- ment in pastures released from grazing reflects a mix of widely scattered wind-dispersed pioneers and, where animal-dispersed trees exist, multi-modal and decidedly non-random recruitment of pioneer and later successional animal-dispersed trees from seed banks. Keywords Long-distance dispersal Á Legacy recruitment Á Los Tuxtlas Á Seed dispersal Á Seedling recruitment Introduction Transition of human-dominated agricultural landscapes to secondary forest is an accelerating phenomenon throughout the humid tropics (Rudel et al. 2005). A challenge in understanding ecological succession in restorations of tropical forests is distinguishing the contribution of pre- existing seed and seedling banks from that of seeds dis- persed from surrounding landscapes (e.g., Alvarez-Buylla and Martinez-Ramos 1990; Nepstad et al. 1990). Implica- tions of this contrast are evident in disparities in rates of Communicated by Scott Collins. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-010-1669-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. H. F. Howe (&) Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago (m/c 066), Chicago, IL 60607, USA e-mail: hfhowe@uic.edu Y. Urincho-Pantaleon Facultad de Ciencias Biolo ´gicas, Universidad Auto ´noma del Estado de Morelos, 62209 Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico e-mail: yulianu17@hotmail.com M. de la Pen ˜a-Domene Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Auto ´noma de Me ´xico, 04510 Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: manepd@gmail.com C. Martı ´nez-Garza Centro de Investigacio ´n en Biodiversidad y Conservacio ´n, Universidad Auto ´noma del Estado de Morelos, 62209 Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico e-mail: cristina.martinez@buzon.uaem.mx 123 Oecologia (2010) 164:731–740 DOI 10.1007/s00442-010-1669-2