Diverse guilds provide complementary dispersal services in a woodland expansion process after land abandonment

1. Land abandonment due to increasing depopulation of rural areas is an ongoing trend in developed countries worldwide. Abandoned lands represent an opportunity for ecosystem recovery, an urgent need for biodiversity conservation. Seed dispersal services provided by animals are a key feature for this process. Different dispersers may differentially contribute to plant recruitment under different ecological conditions, leading to complementary dispersal services. 2. We studied the dispersal services, quantified as the contribution to plant recruitment, provided by the main dispersal guilds of Spanish juniper Juniperus thurifera L.: small-to-medium sized strongly frugivorous birds (thrushes) and medium-to-large sized carnivorous mammals (red fox and stone marten). To do this, we studied seed fate from seed dispersal to seedling survival during two years and estimated seed dispersal effectiveness (seedlings recruited per m2) in two ecological contexts derived from ecosystem recovery after ...