Elevation range and contemporary climate determine the taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of forest mammals

Abstract

Forest mammal diversity has declined rapidly due to the widely loss and fragmentation of primary forest habitats, further threatening the functioning and biodiversity of forest ecosystems and emphasizes the importance of the research on forest mammal diversity.This study tried to link forest mammal diversity captured by camera traps with elevation range, contemporary climate, paleoclimate change and human activities in China, a country with diverse forest types, high mammal diversity, and massive anthropogenic disturbance on primary forest. The results showed that the camera traps in 72 Chinese forest sites captured 125 mammal species, accounting for 18% of all mammal species in China. In addition, the phylogenetic and functional diversity of these species accounted for 33% and 49% of all mammal species in China. Notably, forest sites with higher elevation range had higher species richness, higher functional diversity, over-dispersed functional structure, but clustered phylogenetic structure. Stable paleoclimate promoted species richness and functional diversity. Higher contemporary temperature and more precipitation promoted phylogenetic diversity and overdispersed phylogenetic structure. In addition, anthropogenic factors (cropland area and human population size) had weak impacts on forest mammal diversity. These ndings suggest that the mammal diversity in Chinese forest ecosystems is mainly associated with natural environmental variables, supporting the habitat heterogeneity hypothesis, history climate stability hypothesis, and tropical conservatism hypothesis. Meanwhile, the weak links between forest mammal diversity with anthropogenic activities may indicate the important role of forest ecosystems in conserving forest mammal diversity in China.

Shifting mammal communities and declining species richness along an elevational gradient on Mount Kenya

“…Indeed, on a global scale, human impact is much larger in the lowlands (Nogués‐Bravo et al., 2008 ). However, the risks of human disturbance on montane habitats continues to climb elevation worldwide resulting in encroachment zones that threaten to engulf border zones of protected spaces similar to Mt Kenya's Montane Forest (Feng et al., 2023 ). The lowest elevation Agro‐Forestry plantations had the second highest species richness among vegetation zones, but showed a low relative abundance of native mammals, presumably due to competition with livestock and hunting.…”

“…This concern is particularly relevant for Mt Kenya, given the combination of both low latitudes and large elevational range (Tenorio et al., 2023 ). It is also worth noting that the area of highest species richness abuts the human modified landscape and is most at risk of habitat fragmentation and land use conversion, a combination that has been projected to be troubling for similar montane biodiversity hotspots, which also face pressures of anthropogenic localized disturbance (Feng et al., 2023 ) as well as climate change (Iturralde‐Pólit et al., 2017 ; Ye et al., 2018 ). Given the expected future climate change in the region (Konecky et al., 2014 ; Notter et al., 2007 ; Waititu et al., 2022 ), we also think this topic will become even more important for evaluating the importance of elevational gradients in protecting biodiversity.…”