35
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Does logging and forest conversion to oil palm agriculture alter functional diversity in a biodiversity hotspot?

      research-article

      Read this article at

      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

          Forests in Southeast Asia are rapidly being logged and converted to oil palm. These changes in land-use are known to affect species diversity but consequences for the functional diversity of species assemblages are poorly understood. Environmental filtering of species with similar traits could lead to disproportionate reductions in trait diversity in degraded habitats. Here, we focus on dung beetles, which play a key role in ecosystem processes such as nutrient recycling and seed dispersal. We use morphological and behavioural traits to calculate a variety of functional diversity measures across a gradient of disturbance from primary forest through intensively logged forest to oil palm. Logging caused significant shifts in community composition but had very little effect on functional diversity, even after a repeated timber harvest. These data provide evidence for functional redundancy of dung beetles within primary forest and emphasize the high value of logged forests as refugia for biodiversity. In contrast, conversion of forest to oil palm greatly reduced taxonomic and functional diversity, with a marked decrease in the abundance of nocturnal foragers, a higher proportion of species with small body sizes and the complete loss of telecoprid species (dung-rollers), all indicating a decrease in the functional capacity of dung beetles within plantations. These changes also highlight the vulnerability of community functioning within logged forests in the event of further environmental degradation.

          Related collections

          Most cited references97

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

          New multidimensional functional diversity indices for a multifaceted framework in functional ecology.

          Functional diversity is increasingly identified as an important driver of ecosystem functioning. Various indices have been proposed to measure the functional diversity of a community, but there is still no consensus on which are most suitable. Indeed, none of the existing indices meets all the criteria required for general use. The main criteria are that they must be designed to deal with several traits, take into account abundances, and measure all the facets of functional diversity. Here we propose three indices to quantify each facet of functional diversity for a community with species distributed in a multidimensional functional space: functional richness (volume of the functional space occupied by the community), functional evenness (regularity of the distribution of abundance in this volume), and functional divergence (divergence in the distribution of abundance in this volume). Functional richness is estimated using the existing convex hull volume index. The new functional evenness index is based on the minimum spanning tree which links all the species in the multidimensional functional space. Then this new index quantifies the regularity with which species abundances are distributed along the spanning tree. Functional divergence is measured using a novel index which quantifies how species diverge in their distances (weighted by their abundance) from the center of gravity in the functional space. We show that none of the indices meets all the criteria required for a functional diversity index, but instead we show that the set of three complementary indices meets these criteria. Through simulations of artificial data sets, we demonstrate that functional divergence and functional evenness are independent of species richness and that the three functional diversity indices are independent of each other. Overall, our study suggests that decomposition of functional diversity into its three primary components provides a meaningful framework for its quantification and for the classification of existing functional diversity indices. This decomposition has the potential to shed light on the role of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and on the influence of biotic and abiotic filters on the structure of species communities. Finally, we propose a general framework for applying these three functional diversity indices.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Functional diversity: back to basics and looking forward.

            Functional diversity is a component of biodiversity that generally concerns the range of things that organisms do in communities and ecosystems. Here, we review how functional diversity can explain and predict the impact of organisms on ecosystems and thereby provide a mechanistic link between the two. Critical points in developing predictive measures of functional diversity are the choice of functional traits with which organisms are distinguished, how the diversity of that trait information is summarized into a measure of functional diversity, and that the measures of functional diversity are validated through quantitative analyses and experimental tests. There is a vast amount of trait information available for plant species and a substantial amount for animals. Choosing which traits to include in a particular measure of functional diversity will depend on the specific aims of a particular study. Quantitative methods for choosing traits and for assigning weighting to traits are being developed, but need much more work before we can be confident about trait choice. The number of ways of measuring functional diversity is growing rapidly. We divide them into four main groups. The first, the number of functional groups or types, has significant problems and researchers are more frequently using measures that do not require species to be grouped. Of these, some measure diversity by summarizing distances between species in trait space, some by estimating the size of the dendrogram required to describe the difference, and some include information about species' abundances. We show some new and important differences between these, as well as what they indicate about the responses of assemblages to loss of individuals. There is good experimental and analytical evidence that functional diversity can provide a link between organisms and ecosystems but greater validation of measures is required. We suggest that non-significant results have a range of alternate explanations that do not necessarily contradict positive effects of functional diversity. Finally, we suggest areas for development of techniques used to measure functional diversity, highlight some exciting questions that are being addressed using ideas about functional diversity, and suggest some directions for novel research.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              A functional approach reveals community responses to disturbances.

              Understanding the processes shaping biological communities under multiple disturbances is a core challenge in ecology and conservation science. Traditionally, ecologists have explored linkages between the severity and type of disturbance and the taxonomic structure of communities. Recent advances in the application of species traits, to assess the functional structure of communities, have provided an alternative approach that responds rapidly and consistently across taxa and ecosystems to multiple disturbances. Importantly, trait-based metrics may provide advanced warning of disturbance to ecosystems because they do not need species loss to be reactive. Here, we synthesize empirical evidence and present a theoretical framework, based on species positions in a functional space, as a tool to reveal the complex nature of change in disturbed ecosystems. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Anim. Conserv
                acv
                Animal Conservation
                BlackWell Publishing Ltd (Oxford, UK )
                1367-9430
                1469-1795
                April 2014
                09 October 2013
                : 17
                : 2
                : 163-173
                Affiliations
                [1 ]School of Biology, University of Leeds Leeds, UK
                [2 ]Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK
                [3 ]School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University Cairns, QLD, Australia
                [4 ]Science and Knowledge Division, Conservation International Arlington, VA, USA
                [5 ]Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University New York, NY, USA
                [6 ]School of Sustainable Agriculture, Universiti Malaysia Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
                [7 ]Sepilok Forest Research Centre, Sabah Forestry Department Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia
                [8 ]Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University Princeton, NJ, USA
                Author notes
                Felicity A. Edwards, School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. Email: bs08f2a@ 123456leeds.ac.uk

                Editor: Darren Evans

                Associate Editor: Nick Isaac

                Article
                10.1111/acv.12074
                4372061
                25821399
                d38209ee-087b-4544-9efd-ce65acb7fbd7
                © 2013 The Authors. Animal Conservation published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Zoological Society of London.

                This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 08 November 2012
                : 09 August 2013
                Categories
                Original Articles

                borneo,deforestation,ecosystem services,habitat change,palm oil,tropical forest

                Comments

                Comment on this article