Background: In Mexico, where 50 % of the original Tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF) has been lost due to human activities, restoration these forests is essential.
 Questions and/or hypotheses: (1) L. styraciflua favors survival and growth Q. germana M. schiedeana species (2) Are there competitive effects between nurses beneficiary species? (3) Is magnitude positive/negative interspecifi...

The majority of the 60 native terrestrial mammal species that reside in the northeastern United States (US) utilize resources from several habitats on a seasonal basis. However, as many as 20 species demonstrate some preference for early-successional forests, shrublands, or old-field habitats. A few of these (e.g. lagomorphs) can be considered obligate users of these habitats, and the specialis...

Potential nitrogen mineralization and nitrification were measured in soils from a primary successional sequence developed on sand dunes and from a secondary successional sequence on old fields. Potential nitrogen mineralization in soils from the primary sere increased through the first five stages and then leveled off. Nitrogen mineralization was relatively constant in soils from the secondary ...

There is increasing interest in developing better predictive tools and a broader conceptual framework to guide the restoration of degraded land. Traditionally, restoration efforts have focused on re-establishing historical disturbance regimes or abiotic conditions, relying on successional processes to guide the recovery of biotic communities. However, strong feedbacks between biotic factors and...

In the northeastern United States, many vertebrate species rely on early successional forest habitats (ESHs). ESHs may also support higher invertebrate diversity and abundance than late successional habitats (LSHs). We assessed the differences in family-level richness and biomass of understory terrestrial invertebrates during the summer season in paired ESH (3–7 years since harvest) and LSH ( 5...

Understanding the recovery dynamics of ecosystems presents a major challenge in the human-impacted tropics. We tested whether secondary forests follow equilibrium or non-equilibrium dynamics by evaluating community reassembly over time, across different successional stages, and among multiple life stages. Based on long-term and static data from six 1-ha plots in NE Costa Rica, we show that seco...

We assessed the potential effect of frugivore extinctions on forest regeneration in the North Negros Forest Reserve, a forest fragment that is one of the last remaining wet tropical rainforest ecosystems in the biogeographic region of the central Philippine Islands. We evaluated foraging observations of 19 species of birds, fruit bats, and other mammals in three successional habitats and identi...

Colonization-competition trade-offs represent a stabilizing mechanism that is thought to maintain diversity of forest trees. If so, then early-successional species should benefit from high capacity to colonize new sites, and late-successional species should be good competitors. Tests of this hypothesis in forests have been precluded by an inability to estimate the many factors that contribute t...

This paper provides a conceptual framework for increasing our understanding of the relationships between plant resistance to insect herbivores and insect herbivore influences on ecosystem nutrient cycling and succession. For a given plant species, adequate nutrient/light availability favors establishment and productivity; small insect herbivore populations regulated by plant biochemistry stimul...

In this local-scale synecological study, we investigated the changes in plant community composition throughout secondary succession occurring after cessation of agricultural land use (i.e. grassland abandonment). The successional sequence studied had following pathway: Avenula pubescens (Huds.) Dumort. haypastures → Brachypodium pinnatum (L.) P.Beauv. Cornus sanguinea L. scrubs late-successiona...