Restoring tropical biodiversity: Leaf traits predict growth and survival of late-successional trees in early-successional environments

Natural succession after abandonment of degraded land often results in a low-diversity secondary forest that persists for decades. Planting late-successional species in early-successional environments may help to bypass this low-diversity stage by overcoming dispersal limitation. To identify which late-successional species perform best in early-successional environments, we tested growth and survival of species with different expressions of leaf traits over 4 years. We measured the intraspecific variation in leaf mass per unit area (SLM) and in leaf density of 24 non-pioneer tropical tree species with different maximum mature heights near the Los Tuxtlas Biological Station in Veracruz, southeast Mexico. Growth and survival increased with increased variation in SLM in the entire sample (R2 up to 0.44), with mid-canopy species (>11-25 m) closely reflecting variation in SLM (R2 up to 0.88). A lesser but statistically significant relationship existed for leaf density. Intraspecific variation in SLM enables identification of flexible species with potentially higher growth rates and survival across the microhabitats of early-successional environments, providing an especially powerful tool for selecting mid-canopy species.