Even though most of the world's tropical forests occur in human-influenced landscapes, it remains unclear how the maintenance of biodiversity and persistence of species is influenced by the interactions between local factors such as the abiotic environment, landscape factors such as habitat configuration, and species' attributes such as size. Resolving how local and landscape factors interact to promote or decrease species' persistence will improve our understanding of how biodiversity is maintained in tropical human-dominated landscapes. My research questions are: How do landscape composition (forest amount) and configuration (patch size and level of fragmentation) affect seed arrival and the richness and abundance of seedlings and saplings, depending on the plant traits? (2) How do biotic and abiotic factors at the local level, such as edge effects and density of conspecifics, affect plant biodiversity depending on the plant traits? To test my questions, I will focus on palms because they are a key component of tropical rain forests, present different life strategies, and are animal-seed dispersal mediated. I predict an interactive effect between landscape forest amount and patch size in which the overall seed rain diversity and seed abundance and the richness of large-seeded species will be higher in large than in small patches when the surrounding landscape contains lower levels of forest cover. Conversely, when there is high forest cover in the surrounding landscape forest, I predict that large and small patches will have a similar diversity and composition of seed rain, given that forest elements in the matrix potentially would provide seed sources and enhance the mobility of animal seed dispersers. In addition, I expect that the establishment and survival of the seedlings and saplings will depend mainly on local factors rather than landscape factors, with plant species' life history and seed size mediating edge effects (e.g., higher light, lower humidity) and conspecific density dependence processes. I will test my questions by surveying palm seeds and saplings in transects from the edge to the core in 32 focal forest patches that ensure independence among my main variables of interest, patch size, and forest amount in a 1 km radius. This research will provide a fundamental understanding of the drivers of species maintenance in human-dominated landscapes to inform conservation and restoration strategies.