Forest regeneration in degraded pasture is often inhibited or arrested in fragmented tropical landscapes. The slow recovery of tree species richness is a product of differential dispersal limitation, a principal recruitment barrier that limits the movement of typically large-seeded non-pioneer tree species across fragmented tropical landscapes. With an estimated 50-75% of tropical tree species dependent on frugivores for dispersal, tree propagules that do arrive into regenerating pastures, establish as a select group of primarily small-seeded pioneer tree species. Under these conditions, it is clear how the capacity for degraded pasture habitat to recover primary structural characteristics and diversity can be greatly inhibited. We assessed the relative importance that dominate recruitment barriers had on tree species regeneration within tropical pastures.
Results/Conclusions
The database Web of Knowledge was searched to retrieve relevant studies for all available years. Seed and seedling abundance data within field experiments contrasting pasture and forest regeneration conditions was extracted. A meta-analysis using binary outcome data was then used to examine the strength of seed and recruitment limitation in pastures. Preliminary results suggests that regeneration in pastures is most inhibited during early tree recruitment life-stages. Once introduced into pasture, this regeneration bottleneck however, did not define recruitment abundance among larger seeded, late successional tree species. This suggests that introduction of late successional tree species may curve the prolonged vacancy of many tree species typical in degraded pastures.