Hope for Tropical Biodiversity After All
| Autor: | Eric Fegraus, Fernanda Santos, Alex Zvoleff, Nurul L. Winarni, Johanna Hurtado, Julia Salvador, Badru Mugerwa, Krisna Gajapersad, Patrick A. Jansen, Santiago Espinosa, Alex McWilliam, Jean Claude Razafimahaimodison, Chris Hallam, Ajay Kumar, David Eichberg, Patricia Alvarez-Loayza, Wilson Roberto Spironello, Emanuel H. Martin, Sandy J. Andelman, Christine Fletcher, Mireille Ndoundou-Hockemba, Michael R. Willig, Hugo Romero-Saltos, Colin Mahony, Lydia Beaudrot, Jorge A. Ahumada, Eileen Larney, Kelly Boekee, Timothy G. O'Brien, Marcela Guimarães Moreira Lima, Francesco Rovero, Douglas Sheil, Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine Conservation Biology Outcome Assessment Biodiversity Forests Procedures 01 natural sciences Tropic Climate Trend Study Environmental monitoring Tropical climate Tropical Rain Forest Biology (General) Conservation Of Natural Resources Conservation Science Mammals education.field_of_study Species Occupancy Ecology Agroforestry General Neuroscience PE&RC Terrestrial Environments Southeast Asia Vertebrates Species evenness General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Research Article Environmental Monitoring Conservation of Natural Resources Neotropics Evolutionary Processes Occupancy QH301-705.5 Species Evenness Population Biology 010603 evolutionary biology Ecosystems Mammal General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Birds 03 medical and health sciences Population Metrics Bird Animals Life Science Controlled Study Forest education Community Structure Species Extinction Population Density Evolutionary Biology Tropical Climate Population Biology General Immunology and Microbiology Animal Ecology and Environmental Sciences Organisms Quantitative Analysis Biology and Life Sciences Tropics Species Diversity Nonhuman Standardization 030104 developmental biology Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Africa Species Richness Species richness Environmental Protection |
| Zdroj: | PloS Biology 14 (2016) 1 PLoS biology Repositório Institucional do INPA Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA) instacron:INPA PLoS Biology PloS Biology, 14(1) PLoS Biology, Vol 14, Iss 1, p e1002357 (2016) |
| ISSN: | 1545-7885 |
| Popis: | Extinction rates in the Anthropocene are three orders of magnitude higher than background and disproportionately occur in the tropics, home of half the world’s species. Despite global efforts to combat tropical species extinctions, lack of high-quality, objective information on tropical biodiversity has hampered quantitative evaluation of conservation strategies. In particular, the scarcity of population-level monitoring in tropical forests has stymied assessment of biodiversity outcomes, such as the status and trends of animal populations in protected areas. Here, we evaluate occupancy trends for 511 populations of terrestrial mammals and birds, representing 244 species from 15 tropical forest protected areas on three continents. For the first time to our knowledge, we use annual surveys from tropical forests worldwide that employ a standardized camera trapping protocol, and we compute data analytics that correct for imperfect detection. We found that occupancy declined in 22%, increased in 17%, and exhibited no change in 22% of populations during the last 3–8 years, while 39% of populations were detected too infrequently to assess occupancy changes. Despite extensive variability in occupancy trends, these 15 tropical protected areas have not exhibited systematic declines in biodiversity (i.e., occupancy, richness, or evenness) at the community level. Our results differ from reports of widespread biodiversity declines based on aggregated secondary data and expert opinion and suggest less extreme deterioration in tropical forest protected areas. We simultaneously fill an important conservation data gap and demonstrate the value of large-scale monitoring infrastructure and powerful analytics, which can be scaled to incorporate additional sites, ecosystems, and monitoring methods. In an era of catastrophic biodiversity loss, robust indicators produced from standardized monitoring infrastructure are critical to accurately assess population outcomes and identify conservation strategies that can avert biodiversity collapse. In contrast to other reports, inaugural results from a pan-tropical camera trap network suggest that tropical forest protected areas maintain their biodiversity of large and medium ground-dwelling mammals and birds. Author Summary Humans are currently driving numerous animal species toward extinction. Species loss is especially high in tropical regions where most species live and where biodiversity threats are severe. Protected areas such as national parks are the cornerstone of species conservation, but whether protected areas really sustain animal populations and prevent extinction has been debated. This applies particularly to understudied areas such as tropical forests, for which high-quality data are usually not available. We used camera traps to monitor populations of ground-dwelling mammals and birds in 15 protected tropical forests around the world and then used powerful analytics to determine their population trends. We found that some animal populations increased while others decreased. However, the number and distribution of species in these areas did not decline during the 3–8 years we examined. These results are more optimistic about the success of protected areas than were previous studies. Our study demonstrates the importance of standardized monitoring for conservation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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