1: Newly germinated seedlings are vulnerable to biomass removal but usually have at least six months to grow before they are exposed to dry-season fires, a major disturbance in savannas. In contrast, plants are exposed to browsers from the time they germinate, making browsing potentially a very powerful bottleneck for establishing seedlings. 2: Here we assess the resilience of seedlings of 10 savanna tree species to top-kill during the first 6 months of growth. Newly-germinated seeds from four dominant African genera from across the rainfall gradient were planted in a common garden experiment at the Wits Rural Facility and clipped at 1 cm when they were ~2, 3, 4, and 5 months old. Survival, growth, and key plant traits were monitored for the following 2.5 years. 3: Seedlings from environments with high herbivory pressure survived top-kill at a younger age than those from low-herbivore environments, and more palatable genera had higher herbivore-tolerance. Most individuals that survived were able to recover lost biomass within 12 months, but the clipping treatment affected root mass fraction and branching patterns. 4: Synthesis: The impact of early browsing as a demographic bottleneck can be predicted by integrating information on the probability of being browsed and the probability of surviving a browse event. Establishment limitation through early-browsing is an under-recognised constraint on savanna tree species distributions. Data may be used without requesting permission after the the publication of the paper

The data represent monthly survival and growth data for ~740 seedlings from 10 species under various levels of clipping. Total data rows : 3287. These were from of four common savanna tree clades: Combretum, Vachellia, Senegalia, and Detarioideae. The species: Colophospermum_mopane Combretum_apiculatum Combretum_collinum Combretum_hereroense Combretum_molle Senegalia_caffra Senegalia_mellifera Senegalia_nigrescens Vachellia_davyi Vachellia_erioloba Vachellia_exuvialis Vachellia_karroo(rbay) Vachellia_sieberiana The study was carried out at the Wits Rural Facility (WRF), a 350 ha research station of the University of the Witwatersrand, in the central savanna Lowveld area of Limpopo Province, South Africa (∼31° 06E, 24°30 S) between (September 2016) and March 2017 approximately. Data was collected by Frank Nyathi in field work. Elizabeth Telford did excavating and weighing the below-ground biomass. Stephen Young, Zemijo Kimmie, Benko Kimmie, and Zaid Kimmie did observational data collection, measuring seedlings and watching impala. Mechanisms Controlling Species Limits in a Changing World. NRF/SASSCAL Grant number 118588