Scale-Dependent Effects of Habitat Disturbance on Species Richness in Tropical Forests

The aim of this study is to survey the angiosperms of two montane forest remnants in the southern Bahia, Brazil: Corcovado (SCO) and Pedra Lascada (SPL). Both fragments are located in the municipality of Almadina and Barro Preto, respectively, and are 18 km distant from each other. We sampled 899 species of angiosperms distributed in 437 genera and 116 families. The SCO was the richest area with 678 species, distributed in 367 genera and 100 families. SPL showed 466 species in 269 genera and 88 families. The percentage of species identified was 85.8% and of this total, 37.7% are endemic to the Atlantic Forest, 11.2% are endemic to southern Bahia and northern Espírito Santo and 7% are disjunct between the Atlantic Forest and Amazon. The remaining percentages (44.3%) were of species widely distributed. The richest families in the two areas were Orchidaceae (10%), Rubiaceae (7%), Bromeliaceae (5.5%), Melastomataceae (4.2%) and Poaceae (4%). The richest genera were Psychotria (2%),Piper (1.8%), Ocotea (1.6%),Vriesea (1.5%) and Peperomia (1.4%). More than half of the recorded species showed non-arboreal habit, regarding life forms documented. That comes against the assertion that many authors in the tropical forests, where species richness in angiosperms is expected for non-woody species, especially in montane forests. Twelve species have been identified as new, but seven others already described from collections previously obtained in these two areas. Orchidaceae, Rubiaceae, Poaceae and Bromeliaceae showed significant richness in this study these families are commonly reported as the richest in other inventories in the Atlantic Forest in southern Bahia reinforcing their importance to the regional flora. The high levels of richness, endemism, and the growing numbers of new taxonomic discoveries from the SPL and SCO sites indicate the biological importance of these two forest remnants. The implementation of parks or other protected environmental reserves would be essential to the conservation of its species.

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Patterns of Tree Species Richness Along Peninsular Extensions of Tropical Forests

Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters ◽

10.2307/2997445 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 85 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Rosanne Tackaberry ◽

Martin Kellman

Keyword(s):

Species Richness ◽

Tropical Forests ◽

Tree Species ◽

Tree Species Richness

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Relationship between Species Richness of Excavator Birds and Cavity–adopters in Seven Tropical Forests in Costa Rica

The Wilson Journal of Ornithology ◽

10.1676/07-165.1 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 121 (1) ◽

pp. 75-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Luis Sandoval ◽

Gilbert Barrantes

Keyword(s):

Species Richness ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Tropical Forests

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What drives the spatial distribution and dynamics of local species richness in tropical forest?

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2017.1503 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 284 (1863) ◽

pp. 20171503 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Thorsten Wiegand ◽

Felix May ◽

Martin Kazmierczak ◽

Andreas Huth

Keyword(s):

Species Richness ◽

Tropical Forest ◽

Temporal Variation ◽

Tropical Forests ◽

Temporal Variability ◽

Dynamic Models ◽

Neutral Theory ◽

Spatial And Temporal Variation ◽

Demographic Stochasticity ◽

Spatio Temporal

Understanding the structure and dynamics of highly diverse tropical forests is challenging. Here we investigate the factors that drive the spatio-temporal variation of local tree numbers and species richness in a tropical forest (including 1250 plots of 20 × 20 m 2 ). To this end, we use a series of dynamic models that are built around the local spatial variation of mortality and recruitment rates, and ask which combination of processes can explain the observed spatial and temporal variation in tree and species numbers. We find that processes not included in classical neutral theory are needed to explain these fundamental patterns of the observed local forest dynamics. We identified a large spatio-temporal variability in the local number of recruits as the main missing mechanism, whereas variability of mortality rates contributed to a lesser extent. We also found that local tree numbers stabilize at typical values which can be explained by a simple analytical model. Our study emphasized the importance of spatio-temporal variability in recruitment beyond demographic stochasticity for explaining the local heterogeneity of tropical forests.

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Diversity and body size of dung beetles attracted to different dung types along a tropical land-use gradient in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Journal of Tropical Ecology ◽

10.1017/s0266467409990423 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 53-65 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Shahabuddin ◽

Purnama Hidayat ◽

Sjafrida Manuwoto ◽

Woro A. Noerdjito ◽

Teja Tscharntke ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Species Richness ◽

Body Size ◽

Habitat Type ◽

Dung Beetle ◽

Habitat Disturbance ◽

Dung Beetles ◽

Natural Forest ◽

Land Use Intensity ◽

Habitat Types

Abstract:Dung beetles are a functionally important component of most terrestrial ecosystems, but communities change with habitat disturbance and deforestation. In this study, we tested if dung beetle ensembles on dung of introduced cattle and of the endemic anoa, a small buffalo, are affected differentially by habitat disturbance. Therefore, we exposed 10 pitfall traps, five baited with anoa and five baited with cattle dung, per site in six habitat types ranging from natural and selectively logged rain forest to three types of agroforestry system (characterized by different management intensity) and open areas (n = 4 replicate sites per habitat type) at the margin of Lore Lindu National Park, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. We found 28 species, 43% of which were endemic to Sulawesi. Species richness, abundance and biomass declined from natural forest towards open area. Large-bodied species appeared to be more sensitive to habitat disturbance and the ratio of large to small-sized dung beetles declined with land-use intensity. Although selectively logged forest and cocoa agroforestry systems had lower species richness compared with natural forest, they appeared to maintain a high portion of species originally inhabiting forest sites. The similarity of dung beetle ensembles recorded at forest and agroforestry sites reflects the high similarity of some habitat variables (e.g. vegetation structure and microclimate) between both habitat types compared with open areas. Species richness and abundances as well as species composition, which was characterized by decreases in mean body size, changed with land-use intensity, indicating that dung type is less important than habitat type for determining ensemble structure of these Indonesian dung beetles.

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Species packing and the latitudinal gradient in local beta-diversity

10.1101/2020.07.14.200006 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ke Cao ◽

Richard Condit ◽

Xiangcheng Mi ◽

Lei Chen ◽

Haibao Ren ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Species Richness ◽

Tropical Forests ◽

Beta Diversity ◽

Latitudinal Gradient ◽

Sampling Bias ◽

Small Samples ◽

Gamma Diversity ◽

Species Packing ◽

High Gamma ◽

Declining Species

AbstractThe latitudinal gradient of declining species richness at higher latitudes is among the most fundamental patterns in ecology. However, whether changes in species composition across space (beta-diversity) contribute to this global gradient of species richness remains debated. Previous studies that failed to resolve the issue suffered from a well-known tendency for small samples in high gamma-diversity areas to inflate measures of beta-diversity. We provide here a rigorous test, comparing species-packing and local heterogeneity across a latitudinal gradient in tree species richness in Asia, using beta-diversity metrics that correct the gamma-diversity and sampling bias. Our data include 21 large forest plots across a wide environmental gradient in East Asia. We demonstrate that local beta-diversity increases with topographic heterogeneity, but after accounting for this and correcting the gamma-diversity bias, tropical forests still have higher beta-diversity than temperate, contributing to the latitudinal gradient of species richness. This supports the hypothesis of tighter species packing and larger niche space in tropical forests while demonstrating the importance of local processes in controlling beta-diversity.

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