Successional response of a tropical forest termite assemblage to experimental habitat perturbation

Abstract

Summary 1.Research into the successional responses of tropical forest communities following disturbance has potential applications for habitat restoration. Currently little is known of how these responses relate to the recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Succession of assemblages of decomposer arthropods is essential for the recovery of the soil community and nutrient cycling processes. 2. This study investigated the successional response of a termite assemblage to the experimental perturbation of forest habitat in southern Cameroon, examining the implications for tropical forest restoration. A randomized block design consisting of four experimental perturbations of diering severity was established in an old secondary forest in the Mbalmayo Forest Reserve. Isolated control sites were left in undisturbed forest. Recovery of the termite assemblage was assessed by measuring termite species richness and abundance at regular intervals over the subsequent 12 months. 3. The speed of recovery of the termite assemblage varied with the type and extent of perturbation. In treatments involving severe soil and canopy disturbance, termite species richness and abundance recovered more rapidly when dead wood was left on the ground following perturbation. The availability of dead wood also resulted in recolonization by a subset of the termite assemblage that was distinct compositionally from that sampled from all other treatments. This subset at sites with additional dead wood included not only certain wood-feeding species, but also soil feeders. 4. The positive eects upon the termite assemblage of leaving substantial dead wood on the ground has implications for the restoration of tropical forests following human-induced disturbances such as logging. The accelerated recovery of termite diversity and assemblage composition is a signi®cant component of soil community recovery and the restoration of nutrient cycles. These bene®ts are expected to in¯uence soil fertility and, ultimately, forest regeneration. The duration and persistence of these eects will depend crucially on the type, scale and intensity

Successional changes in soil, litter and macroinvertebrate parameters following selective logging in a Mexican Cloud Forest

“…Many studies have found that the short-term impact on the invertebrate community is imperceptible if the intensity of extraction is low as in our recently logged sites (Davies et al, 1999;termites, Siira-Pietikäinen et al, 2001;macroarthropods). Furthermore, some studies have not found a short-term effect, even after clear-cutting, on the macroinvertebrate community (Theenhaus and Schaefer, 1995).…”

“…It has been widely recognised that forest disturbance can affect nutrient cycling (Nilsson et al, 1995;Finér et al, 2003) and soil biota (Davies et al, 1999;Lavelle, 2000;Brown et al, 2001;Pietikäinen et al, 2003). Logging disturbance can have short-and long-term impacts on the below-ground subsystem.…”

Effects of controlled livestock grazing and annual prescribed fire on epigeal termite mounds in a savannah woodland in Burkina Faso

“…A relatively large corpus of data is available on termite mound densities in natural and man-modified environments (Davies et al, 1999;Lepage and Darlington, 2000;Korb and Linsenmair, 2001), but fewer studies exist on the impact of management practices on termites (Davies, 1997;Eggleton et al, 1995), as outlined by Black and Okwakol (1997).…”

Rapid recovery of an insect–plant interaction following habitat loss and experimental wetland restoration

“…Negative distances from the wetland edge (located at 0 m) are inside the undisturbed wetland recover to a pre-disturbance state following restoration of degraded habitats (for a review, see Hoffman and . However, there is less known about the rate of recovery of community composition or relative abundance of species (Davies et al 1999). Despite the theoretical and practical importance of differential species losses for the stability of interactions in fragmented landscapes (Fagan et al 1999), to our knowledge no studies have monitored the strength of insect-plant interactions following habitat loss or tested whether these relationships can recover to a pre-disturbance state with restoration management.…”

“…Although restoration practices are widespread and sometimes large in scale, only a few studies have monitored changes in both plant and animal communities following habitat disturbance, as well as subsequently testing whether species assemblages recover following restoration (Davies et al 1999;Baer et al 2002). For example, Wassenaar et al (2005) monitored species assemblages of dung beetles, millipedes, trees, small mammals and birds in coastal dune forests after the removal of vegetation for mining.…”