Rainforest wildlife surprisingly sensitive to landscape changes
Recycled News
Rainforest wildlife surprisingly sensitive to landscape changes
Long-term study reveals dramatic impact of fragmentation
The slightest clearing in the vast rainforests of the Amazon can wreak havoc
with the inhabitants, impeding the movement of species and disrupting their
communities, according to the results of a 22-year investigation published in
the June issue of Conservation Biology.
A team of researchers led by William F. Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute reviewed more than 340 articles and papers generated by the
Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), the world's largest
and longest-running study of habitat fragmentation, since its inception in
1979.
They found that the effect of habitat fragmentation on the structure,
composition and function of rainforests is far-reaching and widely felt. It
increases local extinction rates for many plant and animal species;
drastically alters species richness and abundance; and disrupts ecological
processes, as well as creating opportunities for non-native species invasions,
altering forest carbon storage and increasing vulnerability to fire.
"A surprising number of wildlife species are extremely sensitive to very small
clearings,==said Laurance. "Even a 30-meter-wide road alters the community
composition of understory birds and other wildlife, and creates a complete
barrier to the movements of some species.==
Laurance believes the results of the analysis indicate clearly that Amazonian
nature reserves will have to be very large in order to maintain their
diversity and dynamics, and to withstand external threats from such human
disturbances as burning, logging and hunting.
The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragment Project, a joint effort of the
National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) in Brazil and the Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute, seeks to answer questions about plant and animal
relations, the biology of extinction, the process of forest regeneration, and
the effects of forest edge and fragmentation on the genetic structure of
tropical species.
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City,
Republic of Panama, is one of the world's leading centers for research on the
ecology, evolution and conservation of tropical organisms.
Contact: William Laurance laur...@tivoli.si.edu 202-786-2819 8252
Smithsonian Institution
###
More information is available at www.stri.org.