Plantings accelerate restoration of tropical forest but assembly mechanisms appear insensitive to initial composition

1. Phylogenetic and trait-based approaches to community ecology are increasingly being used to test for nonrandom community assembly and are now being applied to assessments of habitat restoration. A critical question for the restoration of tropical forests is how plantings influence the recruitment of new species, and specifically the phylogenetic and functional diversity of restored habitats. 2. We examined 8 years (2006-2014) of tropical forest recruitment in two restoration planting compositions (12 animal-dispersed and 12 wind-dispersed tree species) and a control (no plantings) in 24 plots, Los Tuxtlas, Mexico. Specifically, we assessed the influence of plantings on newly arriving individuals’ phylogenetic, functional, taxonomic diversity, abundance and the change of these measures during early succession. 3. The recruiting individuals’ phylogenetic, functional, taxonomic diversity and abundance increased through succession. Both animal-dispersed plantings and wind-dispersed plant...