8
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: not found
      • Article: not found

      Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene

      ,
      Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
      Wiley-Blackwell

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Related collections

          Most cited references19

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity.

          Human-driven land-use changes increasingly threaten biodiversity, particularly in tropical forests where both species diversity and human pressures on natural environments are high. The rapid conversion of tropical forests for agriculture, timber production and other uses has generated vast, human-dominated landscapes with potentially dire consequences for tropical biodiversity. Today, few truly undisturbed tropical forests exist, whereas those degraded by repeated logging and fires, as well as secondary and plantation forests, are rapidly expanding. Here we provide a global assessment of the impact of disturbance and land conversion on biodiversity in tropical forests using a meta-analysis of 138 studies. We analysed 2,220 pairwise comparisons of biodiversity values in primary forests (with little or no human disturbance) and disturbed forests. We found that biodiversity values were substantially lower in degraded forests, but that this varied considerably by geographic region, taxonomic group, ecological metric and disturbance type. Even after partly accounting for confounding colonization and succession effects due to the composition of surrounding habitats, isolation and time since disturbance, we find that most forms of forest degradation have an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on tropical biodiversity. Our results clearly indicate that when it comes to maintaining tropical biodiversity, there is no substitute for primary forests.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Cascading effects of bird functional extinction reduce pollination and plant density.

            Reductions in bird numbers could hamper ecosystem services such as pollination, but experimental proof is lacking. We show that functional extinction of bird pollinators has reduced pollination, seed production, and plant density in the shrub Rhabdothamnus solandri (Gesneriaceae) on the North Island ("mainland") of New Zealand but not on three nearby island bird sanctuaries where birds remain abundant. Pollen limitation of fruit set is strong [pollen limitation index (PLI) = 0.69] and significant on the mainland but small (PLI = 0.15) and nonsignificant on islands. Seed production per flower on the mainland is reduced 84%. Mainland sites have similar adult densities, but 55% fewer juvenile plants per adult, than island sites. Seed addition experiments near adult R. solandri plants on the mainland found strong seed limitation 5 years after sowing for R. solandri but not for two other co-occurring woody species. This demonstrates a terrestrial trophic cascade.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              COUNTRYSIDE BIOGEOGRAPHY: USE OF HUMAN-DOMINATED HABITATS BY THE AVIFAUNA OF SOUTHERN COSTA RICA

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
                Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
                Wiley-Blackwell
                1540-9295
                March 2014
                March 2014
                : 12
                : 2
                : 131-137
                Article
                10.1890/120201
                a611ac7b-3e1d-4cd9-8748-82bee5970f3b
                © 2014

                http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/tdm_license_1.1

                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article