Human-induced vegetation changes did not affect tree progeny performance in a seasonally dry forest of central Argentina

TORRES, ROMINA C.; RENISON, DANIEL

JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Año: 2017 vol. 147 p. 125 - 132

0140-1963

Regeneration by seed isscarce in seasonally dry mountain forests where shrub-grass patches intermingledwith remnant trees are widespread due to anthropogenic fires and post-fire useby livestock. We hypothesized that progeny performance of remnant trees wouldbe reduced due to soil loss, water limitation and damages to tree structures. Weassessed the progeny performance of three tree species and 70 trees per speciesdistributed in seven sites in central Argentina, which were selected becauseforest patches and shrub-grass patches with remnant trees coexist at a relativelyclose distance. Our main results showed no significant differences between progenyof trees located in forest patches and that of shrub-grass patches regarding seedmass, germination percentage in laboratory, seedling growth in greenhouse andsurvival and growth of outplanted saplings. Thus, our results do not support a hypothesisof human disturbances causing loss of progeny performance in remnant trees. Treesmay be resistant to environmental changes, or there may be compensatorymechanisms, such as reduction of competition from neighbor trees, or increased resourceallocation to reproduction at the expense of adult survival. We conclude that remainingtrees are valuable resources for forest restoration because the quality of theirprogeny is still intact.