We used a highly replicated study to examine vegetation characteristics between patches of intervened forest,
abandoned agroforestry systems with coffee and actively managed agroforestry systems with coffee in a tropical
landscape. In all habitats, plant structural characteristics, individual abundance, species richness and composition were
recorded for the three plant size classes: adult trees, saplings and seedlings. Furthermore, bird species richness and
composition, and seeds dispersed by birds were recorded. Tree abundance was higher in forest habitats while saplings
and seedlings were more abundant in abandoned coffee sites. Although species richness of adult trees was similar in the
three habitats, species richness of saplings and seedlings was much higher in forest and abandoned coffee than in
managed coffee sites. However, in spite of their relatively low species richness, managed coffee sites are an important
refuge for tree species common to the almost disappeared mature forest in the area. Floristic similarity for adult trees
was relatively low between land use types, but clearly higher for seedlings, indicating homogenizing processes at the
landscape level. More than half of the saplings and seedling were not represented by adults in the canopy layer,
suggesting the importance of seed dispersal by birds between habitats. Our results show that each of the studied
ecosystems plays a unique and complementary role as seed source and as habitat for tree recovery and tree diversity.
r 2007 Ru¨ bel Foundation, ETH Zu¨ rich. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.