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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266467410000283How to cite this article: Jasper Mbae Kirika, Katrin Böhning-Gaese, Bonny Dumbo and Nina Farwig (2010). Reduced abundance of latesuccessional trees but not of seedlings in heavily compared with lightly logged sites of three East African tropical forests. Abstract: Logged forests form an increasingly large proportion of tropical landscapes but disproportionately few studies have studied the impact of forest disturbance, e.g. lightly vs. heavily logged, on tree and seedling communities simultaneously. We sampled all trees (on 1 ha) and all recently germinated seedlings (on 90 m 2 ) in three lightly and three heavily logged sites in each of the following three East African tropical forests: Budongo Forest and Mabira Forest in Uganda and Kakamega Forest in Kenya. We analysed species richness, diversity, abundance and community composition of late-and early-successional trees and seedlings. We recorded no difference in species richness or diversity of late-successional or early-successional trees between lightly and heavily logged sites. However, the abundance of late-successional species was lower in heavily than lightly logged sites. Moreover, there was no difference in species richness or diversity of trees among the three forests. Yet, abundances of late-successional trees were higher in Budongo Forest than in Mabira Forest and Kakamega Forest. Species richness, diversity and abundance of seedlings did not differ between lightly and heavily logged sites. Only the abundance of seedlings of late-successional species differed among the forests with more individuals in Budongo Forest than in Mabira Forest. This was corroborated by non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) showing clear differences in composition of tree and seedling communities among the three forests. Thus, both, the tree and seedling communities differed significantly among the three forests but not between lightly and heavily logged sites.

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The geographically widespread species Afrixalus laevis (Anura: Hyperoliidae) currently has a disjunct distribution in western Central Africa (Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and possibly adjacent countries) and the area in and near the Albertine Rift in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring countries. At least two herpetologists have previously suggested that these disjunct populations represent distinct species, and herein, we utilize an integrative taxonomic approach with molecular and morphological data to reconcile the taxonomy of these spiny reed frogs. We sequenced 1554 base pairs of the 16S and RAG1 genes from 34 samples of A. laevis and one sample of A. orophilus (sympatric with eastern populations of A. laevis), and combined these data with previously sequenced GenBank Afrixalus samples via the bioinformatics toolkit SuperCRUNCH. Phylogenetic trees, dated phylogenetic analyses, and species-delimitation analyses were generated with RAxML, BEAST, and BPP, respectively. Eleven mensural characters were taken from multiple specimens of A. laevis and A. orophilus, and compared with paired t-tests and analyses of covariance. These combined results suggested populations of A. laevis in western Central Africa (Cameroon and Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea) represent one species, whereas populations from the Albertine Rift and nearby forests represent two undescribed taxa that are sister to A. dorsimaculatus. The two new species (A. lacustris sp. nov. and A. phantasma sp. nov.) are distinguished by our phylogenetic and species-delimitation analyses, significant differences in several mensural characters, qualitative morphological differences, and by their non-overlapping elevational distribution.

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