Prospects for tropical forest biodiversity in a human‐modified world

Abstract

The future of tropical forest biodiversity depends more than ever on the effective management of human-modified landscapes, presenting a daunting challenge to conservation practitioners and land use managers. We provide a critical synthesis of the scientific insights that guide our understanding of patterns and processes underpinning forest biodiversity in the human-modified tropics, and present a conceptual framework that integrates a broad range of social and ecological factors that define and contextualize the possible future of tropical forest species. A growing body of research demonstrates that spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity are the dynamic product of interacting historical and contemporary human and ecological processes. These processes vary radically in their relative importance within and among regions, and have effects that may take years to become fully manifest. Interpreting biodiversity research findings is frequently made difficult by constrained study designs, low congruence in species responses to disturbance, shifting baselines and an overdependence on comparative inferences from a small number of well studied localities. Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the potential prospects for biodiversity conservation can be explained by regional differences in biotic vulnerability and anthropogenic legacies, an ever-tighter coupling of human-ecological systems and the influence of global environmental change. These differences provide both challenges and opportunities for biodiversity conservation. Building upon our synthesis we outline a simple adaptive-landscape planning framework that can help guide a new research agenda to enhance biodiversity conservation prospects in the human-modified tropics.

Responses of Soil Fungi to Logging and Oil Palm Agriculture in Southeast Asian Tropical Forests

“…Nonfungal sequences and sequences that could not be identified to phylum (3 % of the sequences) were removed prior to downstream analyses. Although there were no significant differences in the total number of observed fungal OTUs across land-use types (F (2,23) =2.43, p=0.11), or in diversity indices (Table 1), OTU abundance accumulated most rapidly in the regenerating forest and slowest in the oil palm plantation (Fig. 1) and, similarly, predicted richness using the Chao 1 estimator showed that predicted fungal richness is greatest in the regenerating forest and lowest in the oil palm plantation (Fig.…”

“…Tropical forests contain more than two-thirds of all terrestrial plant and animal species [1][2][3], but long-term prospects for their survival are uncertain, as more than half of the original extent of these forests has already been degraded by human land-use change and other perturbations [4]. Agricultural expansion continues to be the main driver of tropical deforestation [5] with more than one third of the global terrestrial land area currently under cultivation [6].…”

Effects of experimental nitrogen additions on plant diversity in tropical forests of contrasting disturbance regimes in southern China

“…To our knowledge, dynamics of plant diversity in these reforested ecosystems are poorly understood. Gardner et al (2009) suggested that both spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity are the dynamic product of interacting historical and contemporary human and ecological processes. Considering the central role of tropical forests in protecting and maintaining terrestrial biodiversity, it is important to clarify the responses of biodiversity in these ecosystems to interactions of typical anthropogenic legacies (e.g., land-use practices) and contemporary anthropogenic influences (especially for N deposition).…”

The deep human prehistory of global tropical forests and its relevance for modern conservation

“…The ongoing viability of dry tropical forests is also under serious threat 5 . These alterations affect ecosystems that are central to the stability of Earth's atmosphere and climate 6 , as well as key providers of economic goods and ecosystem services 2 .…”

“…The expansion of human populations into tropical forest environments has seen the latter become some of the most threatened ecosystems in the world 2,3 : every day c. 320 km 2 of tropical rainforest is destroyed, significantly impacting human populations along with 135 plant, animal, and insect species 4 . The ongoing viability of dry tropical forests is also under serious threat 5 .…”