Conklin (1961) defined SC as any continuous agricultural system in which impermanent clearings are cultivated for shorter periods (in years) than they are left to lie fallow. In the Amazon, SC has been practiced by indigenous and traditional populations for centuries and has created a significant portion of the forests that many consider pristine (Balée, 1993 and Denevan, 1992). The effect of SC on BN regeneration is well known by extractivists, who consistently report greater

Crizotinib research buy BN regeneration levels in fallows than in nearby undisturbed forests (Wadt et al., 2005). The dispersal of this nut-producing tree depends on a highly specialized mutualism with scatter-hoarding agoutis (Dasyprocta sp.), for seeds that remain trapped inside unopened fruits suffer almost

100% mortality ( Peres et al., 1997). Although they are prized as bush meat, agoutis are relatively resilient to hunting pressure and remain abundant even in areas having long histories of BN collection ( Peres and Baider, 1997 and Rumiz and Maglianesi, 2001). Agoutis frequently visit SC crops for food and may also benefit from the entangled vegetation and hollow trunks in fallows. These resources may offer shelter ( Silvius and Fragoso, 2003) or visual cues for finding buried seed stocks ( Smith and Reichman, 1984). Moreover, scatter-hoarding animals often transport nuts from late-successional, closed-canopy forests to hide them in early successional habitats such as old fields and disturbed areas. The animals thereby avoid pilferage from other nut-eaters that forage primarily in the forest CHIR-99021 solubility dmso ( Vander Galeterone Wall, 2001). If the nuts transported to fallows survive and germinate,

they have a higher probability of success due to reduced competition and a more favorable light environment. The luminosity is important because BN trees are light-demanding and depend on gaps in the forest to attain their reproductive size (Mori and Prance, 1990). Cotta et al. (2008) were first to outline an experiment to compare and explain the difference in BN regeneration density between fallows and mature nut-producing forests. They concluded that the higher density observed in fallows results from higher light availability. This conclusion for the fallow environment agrees with that established for forest tree-fall gaps, on which BN regeneration depends under closed canopy (Myers et al., 2000). However, SC fallows are not tree-fall gaps (Janzen, 1990). Because of cyclical disturbances, SC creates gaps at a much higher frequency than do natural tree falls in the forest. In addition, every slash-and-burn cycle is a drastic intervention that eliminates all above-ground biomass before recreating the favorable biotic and abiotic conditions for the reestablishment of vegetation. Sprouters are favored over seeders when disturbance regimes are frequent and severe (Bond and Midgley, 2003), as in the dynamic environment of SC.