Resource partitioning has been hypothesized to play a role in the maintenance of tree diversity in tropical forests. We looked for evidence of light and soil moisture partitioning among seedlings of four native Malagasy tree species, the pioneer, gap-adapted species Harungana madagascariensis and the three shade-tolerant species Ocotea cymosa, Stephanostegia capuronii and Uapaca ferruginea. Four hundred and eighty seedlings were transplanted in experimental plots in the Tampolo coastal forest and grown for 2 y. Growth rates increased with increasing light availability for all species, and with increasing dry-season soil moisture for H. madagascariensis. With increasing light availability, survival increased for H. madagascariensis, S. capuronii and U. ferruginea but decreased for O. cymosa. While dry-season soil moisture did not influence the growth or survival of the shade-tolerant species, it interacted with understorey light in its effect on the performance of H. madagascariensis, which performed better in wet soils at high light than in dry soils in shade. Rank reversals in species performance suggested that three of the four tree species partition resource gradients as seedlings, mostly light and secondarily dry-season soil moisture. There was only partial agreement between the performance of transplanted seedlings and the distribution of natural seedlings of the same four species with respect to light and soil moisture, suggesting that the success of tropical tree regeneration can only be partly accounted for by seedling performance across resource gradients.