Diversity and structure of bird communities in contrasting forests of the Hengduan Mountains, China

Low impact of forest conversion on biodiversity: evidence from small mammals in contrasting forests of Mt. Liangshan, China

“…These results indicated that although small mammals can survive in the three forest types, they prefer primary and secondary forests when more food resources and shelter are available (Carey & Johnson, 1995;Gray et al, 2019;Rebelo et al, 2019). Zhang et al (2020) found that the TD, FD and PD of avian communities in secondary forests were higher than those in primary and plantation forests in the same study region, which was inconsistent with our results. Therefore, different taxa may respond differently to forest conversion.…”

“…During the past 40 years, large areas of primary forests in China have been rapidly logged and converted to secondary and plantation forests due to economic development (Jian et al, 2011). Forest conversion could directly or indirectly affect species distributions and the composition of biological communities (Meiners & Pickett, 1999;Suchomel et al, 2014;Tinya et al, 2021), resulting in significant changes in the structure of forestry biotic communities and associated ecosystem services (Hughes, 2017;Zhang et al, 2020). Primary forests can be climax or subclimax forests, where dominant trees are close to or older than their age at physiological maturity (Hilbert & Wiensczyk, 2007;Morales-Hidalgo et al, 2015).…”

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that primary forests play an indispensable role in the conservation of birds (Lindenmayer et al, 2015;Manuwal & Huff, 1987), plants (Kosulic et al, 2020), carabids (Elek et al, 2001;Magura et al, 2015), moths (Luque et al, 2007) and small mammals (Umetsu et al, 2007;Bogdziewicz et al, 2014;Rebelo et al, 2019) especially those that are forest-dependent or/and endemic. However, some studies have shown that the diversity of plants (Graham et al, 2019), small mammals (Suchomel et al 2012;Suchomel et al, 2014;Heer et al, 2015), and birds (Zhang et al, 2020) in secondary and plantation forests were equal to or even higher than that in primary forests, especially in heterogeneous landscape regions where secondary and plantation forests are distributed adjacent to primary forests (Bernard et al, 2009;Yang et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition, understanding the processes of community assembly and the underlying mechanisms community assembly are important for the development of conservation rules. With the development of statistical methodology, it has become possible to quantify the relative importance of habitat filtering, interspecific competition and neutral assembly in community assembly based on the phylogenetic and functional information of species (Montano-Centellas et al, 2020;Webb et al, 2002;Zhang et al, 2020).…”

“…the Natural Forest Protection Program), all forests in the nature reserves, protected by law then and therefore, were exposed to little human disturbance. Zhang et al (2020) assessed the differences in three dimensions of avian diversity (TD, FD and PD) and community structures among the primary, secondary and plantation forests in the Meigu Dafengding Nature Reserve in Mt. Liangshan.…”