Joseph E. Hawes

Quantifying the biodiversity value of tropical primary, secondary, and plantation forests

Biodiversity loss from deforestation may be partly offset by the expansion of secondary forests and plantation forestry in the tropics. However, our current knowledge of the value of these habitats for biodiversity conservation is limited to very few taxa, and many studies are severely confounded by methodological shortcomings. We examined the conservation value of tropical primary, secondary, and plantation forests for 15 taxonomic groups using a robust and replicated sample design that minimized edge effects. Different taxa varied markedly in their response to patterns of land use in terms of species richness and the percentage of species restricted to primary forest (varying from 5% to 57%), yet almost all between-forest comparisons showed marked differences in community structure and composition. Cross-taxon congruence in response patterns was very weak when evaluated using abundance or species richness data, but much stronger when using metrics based upon community similarity. Our results show that, whereas the biodiversity indicator group concept may hold some validity for several taxa that are frequently sampled (such as birds and fruit-feeding butterflies), it fails for those exhibiting highly idiosyncratic responses to tropical land-use change (including highly vagile species groups such as bats and orchid bees), highlighting the problems associated with quantifying the biodiversity value of anthropogenic habitats. Finally, although we show that areas of native regeneration and exotic tree plantations can provide complementary conservation services, we also provide clear empirical evidence demonstrating the irreplaceable value of primary forests.

Diversity and composition of Amazonian moths in primary, secondary and plantation forests.

The response of tropical fauna to landscape-level habitat change is poorly understood. Increased conversion of native primary forest to alternative land-uses, including secondary forest and exotic tree plantations, highlights the importance of assessing diversity patterns within these forest types. We sampled 1848 moths from 335 species of Arctiidae, Saturniidae and Sphingidae, over a total of 30 trap-nights. Sampling was conducted during the wet season 2005, using three light-traps at 15 sites within areas of primary forest, secondary forest and Eucalyptus urograndis plantations in northern Brazilian Amazonia. The Jari study region provides one of the best opportunities to investigate the ecological consequences of land-use change, and this study is one of the first to examine patterns of diversity for a neotropical moth assemblage in a human-dominated landscape in lowland Amazonia. We found that the three moth families responded consistently to disturbance in terms of abundance and community structure but variably in terms of species richness, in a manner apparently supporting a life-history hypothesis. Our results suggest that secondary forests and Eucalyptus plantations can support a substantial level of moth diversity but also show that these forest types hold assemblages with significantly distinct community structures and composition from primary forest. In addition, the ability of these converted land-uses to support primary forest species may be enhanced by proximity to surrounding primary forest, an issue which requires consideration when assessing the diversity and composition of mobile taxa in human-dominated landscapes.

BIOFRAG - a new database for analyzing BIOdiversity responses to forest FRAGmentation

Habitat fragmentation studies have produced complex results that are challenging to synthesize. Inconsistencies among studies may result from variation in the choice of landscape metrics and response variables, which is often compounded by a lack of key statistical or methodological information. Collating primary datasets on biodiversity responses to fragmentation in a consistent and flexible database permits simple data retrieval for subsequent analyses. We present a relational database that links such field data to taxonomic nomenclature, spatial and temporal plot attributes, and environmental characteristics. Field assessments include measurements of the response(s) (e.g., presence, abundance, ground cover) of one or more species linked to plots in fragments within a partially forested landscape. The database currently holds 9830 unique species recorded in plots of 58 unique landscapes in six of eight realms: mammals 315, birds 1286, herptiles 460, insects 4521, spiders 204, other arthropods 85, gastropods 70, annelids 8, platyhelminthes 4, Onychophora 2, vascular plants 2112, nonvascular plants and lichens 320, and fungi 449. Three landscapes were sampled as long-term time series (>10 years). Seven hundred and eleven species are found in two or more landscapes. Consolidating the substantial amount of primary data available on biodiversity responses to fragmentation in the context of land-use change and natural disturbances is an essential part of understanding the effects of increasing anthropogenic pressures on land. The consistent format of this database facilitates testing of generalizations concerning biologic responses to fragmentation across diverse systems and taxa. It also allows the re-examination of existing datasets with alternative landscape metrics and robust statistical methods, for example, helping to address pseudo-replication problems. The database can thus help researchers in producing broad syntheses of the effects of land use. The database is dynamic and inclusive, and contributions from individual and large-scale data-collection efforts are welcome.

Fruit-frugivore interactions in Amazonian seasonally flooded and unflooded forests

Constructing community fruit–frugivore networks has proved challenging in tropical forests to date, particularly in lowland Amazonia, which hosts the most diverse spectrum of frugivorous vertebrates and morphological fruit types worldwide. We assessed data on fruit resource production, frugivore assemblages and corresponding fruit–frugivore networks in two contrasting forest types along the Rio Jurua of western Brazilian Amazonia: seasonally flooded varzea (VZ) and unflooded terra firme forest (TF). Over 2 y we conducted monthly surveys of fruit patches and medium- to large-bodied vertebrate frugivores within three 100-ha plots (two TF, one VZ), supplemented by fruit surveys along 67 5-km transects distributed across two contiguous forest reserves (41 TF, 26 VZ). Observations of trophic interactions were supplemented by semi-structured interviews with experienced hunters and fishermen from 16 local communities. The resultant binary networks contained low proportions of all potential interactions (TF: 25.7%, VZ: 19.4%) between 36 functional groups of frugivores and 152 plant genera and, while we report significant heterogeneity in fruit resource use among broad frugivore guilds within each forest type, recursive partitioning analysis failed to clearly match differences in fruit selection to fruit traits. The annual flood pulse in varzea forests had an overriding influence on the species turnover of both fruit resources and frugivores between the two forest types, with higher-order effects on network structure.

Sampling Effort in Neotropical Primate Diet Studies: Collective Gains and Underlying Geographic and Taxonomic Biases

Primates are among the most observable and best studied mammalian orders, yet the distribution of sampling effort by primatologists has inevitably concentrated on a few genera and a limited number of study sites. We present the first systematic review of sampling effort and associated biases in wild primate field research, focusing on dietary studies across the Neotropics. Our literature review of all 24 neotropical primate ecospecies spans 42 years (1969–2011) and covers 290 dietary studies at 164 study sites across 17 countries. We use a standardized measure of sampling effort to assimilate data sets derived from multiple methodologies and attempt to understand the distribution of effort (total equivalent to 193,804 h) using geographic variables and primate species traits. Results indicate that there are both geographic and taxonomic biases, with sampling effort generally skewed towards large-bodied species occupying large geographic ranges, and concentrated at a select few primatology research hubs. We also note that full primate assemblages at any given study site are rarely investigated. Our assessment thus reveals severely undersampled primate taxa and geographic regions that must be considered in future research. Current biases could be ameliorated by deliberately targeting poorly studied genera anywhere in their geographic distribution, well-studied genera in poorly studied regions, and striving to study multiple sympatric taxa within a single site. Although continued inequalities in sampling effort are probably inevitable, this study shows that this need not inhibit successful compilations and meta-analyses, provided that adequate data on feeding records and sampling effort can be made available.

Size-Energy Relationships in Ecological Communities

Hypotheses that relate body size to energy use are of particular interest in community ecology and macroecology because of their potential to facilitate quantitative predictions about species interactions and to clarify complex ecological patterns. One prominent size-energy hypothesis, the energetic equivalence hypothesis, proposes that energy use from shared, limiting resources by populations or size classes of foragers will be independent of body size. Alternative hypotheses propose that energy use will increase with body size, decrease with body size, or peak at an intermediate body size. Despite extensive study, however, size-energy hypotheses remain controversial, due to a lack of directly-measured data on energy use, a tendency to confound distinct scaling relationships, and insufficient attention to the ecological contexts in which predicted relationships are likely to occur. Our goal, therefore, was to directly evaluate size-energy hypotheses while clarifying how results would differ with alternate methods and assumptions. We comprehensively tested size-energy hypotheses in a vertebrate frugivore guild in a tropical forest in Madagascar. Our test of size-energy hypotheses, which is the first to examine energy intake directly, was consistent with the energetic equivalence hypothesis. This finding corresponds with predictions of metabolic theory and models of energy distribution in ecological communities, which imply that body size does not confer an advantage in competition for energy among populations or size classes of foragers. This result was robust to different assumptions about energy regulation. Our results from direct energy measurement, however, contrasted with those obtained with conventional methods of indirect inference from size-density relationships, suggesting that size-density relationships do not provide an appropriate proxy for size-energy relationships as has commonly been assumed. Our research also provides insights into mechanisms underlying local size-energy relationships and has important implications for predicting species interactions and for understanding the structure and dynamics of ecological communities.

Multitrophic diversity effects of network degradation

Abstract Predicting the functional consequences of biodiversity loss in realistic, multitrophic communities remains a challenge. No existing biodiversity–ecosystem function study to date has simultaneously incorporated information on species traits, network topology, and extinction across multiple trophic levels, while all three factors are independently understood as critical drivers of post‐extinction network structure and function. We fill this gap by comparing the functional consequences of simulated species loss both within (monotrophic) and across (bitrophic) trophic levels, in an ecological interaction network estimated from spatially explicit field data on tropical fecal detritus producer and consumers (mammals and dung beetles). We simulated trait‐ordered beetle and mammal extinction separately (monotrophic extinction) and the coextinction of beetles following mammal loss (bitrophic extinction), according to network structure. We also compared the diversity effects of bitrophic extinction models using a standard monotrophic function (the daily production or consumption of fecal detritus) and a unique bitrophic functional metric (the proportion of daily detritus production that is consumed). We found similar mono‐ and bitrophic diversity effects, regardless of which species traits were used to drive extinctions, yet divergent predictions when different measures of function were used. The inclusion of information on network structure had little apparent effect on the qualitative relationship between diversity and function. These results contribute to our growing understanding of the functional consequences of biodiversity from real systems and underscore the importance of species traits and realistic functional metrics to assessments of the ecosystem impacts of network degradation through species loss.

The History of Ecological Networks

The complex web of inter-relationships observed in nature that confronted early natural historians on their voyages to the tropics, inspired not only the theory of evolution by natural selection but also the development of ecology as a scientific discipline and set the foundation for the study of ecological networks. Modern network analyses owe much to these early observations of species interactions but also to pioneering advances in the fields of mathematics and social sciences. In this chapter, we review the history of ecological network studies, documenting their background in the fields of natural history, mathematics and social sciences, along with the most influential players and the ideas that they introduced. We continue the story up to the present day, documenting developments within ecology including food web models and mutualistic networks, and emerging concepts such as individual-based, trait-based and multi-layer networks. Following generations of detailed observations and theoretical development, modern network ecologists now have both the data and the analytical techniques to advance our understanding of nature’s interdependencies, particularly in the diverse tropical environments that so captivated early naturalists.

Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach

Understanding how ecological communities are structured is a major goal in ecology. Ecological networks representing interaction patterns among species have become a powerful tool to capture the mechanisms underlying plant-animal assemblages. However, these networks largely do not account for inter-individual variability and thus may be limiting our development of a clear mechanistic understanding of community structure. In this study, we develop a new individual-trait based approach to examine the importance of individual plant and pollinator functional size traits (pollinator thorax width and plant nectar holder depth) in mutualistic networks. We performed hierarchical cluster analyses to group interacting individuals into classes, according to their similarity in functional size. We then compared the structure of bee-flower networks where nodes represented either species identity or trait sets. The individual trait-based network was almost twice as nested as its species-based equivalent and it had a more symmetric linkage pattern resulting from of a high degree of size-matching. In conclusion, we show that by constructing individual trait-based networks we can reveal important patterns otherwise difficult to observe in species-based networks and thus improve our understanding of community structure. We therefore recommend using both trait-based and species-based approaches together to develop a clearer understanding of the properties of ecological networks.

Coarse- and fine-scale patterns of distribution and habitat selection places an Amazonian floodplain curassow in double jeopardy

Patterns of habitat selection are influenced by local productivity, resource availability, and predation risk. Species have taken millions of years to hone the macro- and micro-habitats they occupy, but these may now overlap with contemporary human threats within natural species ranges. Wattled Curassow (Crax globulosa), an endemic galliform species of the western Amazon, is threatened by both hunting and habitat loss, and is restricted to white-water floodplain forests of major Amazonian rivers. In this study conducted along the Juruá River, Amazonas, Brazil, we quantified the ranging ecology and fine-scale patterns of habitat selection of the species. We estimated the home range size of C. globulosa using conventional VHF telemetry. To estimate patterns of habitat selection, we used geo-locations of day ranges to examine the extent and intensity of use across the floodplain, which were then compared to a high-resolution flood map of the study area. We captured two females and one male, which we monitored for 13 months between September 2014 and September 2015. Average home range size was 283 ha, based on the 95% aLoCoH estimator. Wattled Curassows selected areas of prolonged flood pulses (six to eight months/year) and had a consistent tendency to be near open water, usually in close proximity to river banks and lakes, especially during the dry season. Amazonian floodplains are densely settled, and the small portions of floodplain habitat used by Wattled Curassows are both the most accessible to hunters and most vulnerable to deforestation. As a result, the geographic and ecological distribution of Wattled Curassows places them at much higher extinction risk at multiple spatial scales, highlighting the need to consider habitat preferences within their conservation strategy.