Temporal change and determinants of maternal reproductive success in an expanding oak forest stand

Global change is generating widespread local-scale expansions of tree populations. During demographic expansions, even small differences in individual reproductive success can generate large differences in the genetic composition of the resulting population. Colonizing tree populations almost invariably show highly skewed distributions of seed production, but the evolution of this reproductive skew during plant recruitment remains understudied.
We examine how recruit mortality modifies initial patterns of acorn dispersal and maternal reproductive success in a recently established, expanding Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) forest stand and test different predictors of successful recruit establishment.
We mapped and genotyped a cohort of seedlings (n = 809) emerging within and around the stand (n = 254 adult trees), identified their habitats and monitored their fate until an age of 3 years. Their mother trees were inferred by Bayesian parentage analysis, and the number of assigned desce...