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A fundamental challenge for ecologists is to evaluate the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on ecosystem processes and functions. Tropical rainforests in Borneo are biologically diverse and provide an array of ecosystem functions and services. However, these forests are being logged and converted to agricultural plantations at a rapid pace. While there are numerous studies on the impacts of these land-use changes on biodiversity, there are far fewer that investigate the consequences of forest disturbance for ecosystem functioning. We investigated the impacts of land-use change in Bornean tropical rainforests on invertebrate-mediated functions using a suite of six easily measurable processes that are linked to nutrient cycling and plant regeneration, and which can be used as indicators of the degree of disturbance and the health of the forest. We explored whether the conversion of primary forest to logged, fragmented forest or agricultural plantations altered the ecosystem processes of dung removal, predation of insect herbivores, functional activity of soil invertebrates, bioturbation, seed removal, and decomposition. Overall, ecosystem processes remained resistant to habitat change except for seed removal, which was lower in heavily logged forests and plantations than in primary forests. This suggests that, despite the loss of many species when forests are logged and converted to agriculture, ecosystem processes provided by invertebrates can remain robust across land-use gradients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variation in plant dispersal capabilities strongly influences the assembly of island plant communities. Many tropical plants have seeds capable of long‐distance, often oceanic, dispersal; in some cases, these taxa speciate into island interior endemics with reduced dispersal capabilities, though whether this is a general pattern is debated. Flotation times are highly variable among plants with oceanic dispersal and between such plants and their inland congeners. Here, we experimentally compared salt‐water flotation in three woody plant genera in Palau, Micronesia, comparing broadly distributed and island endemic species within each genus. The widespread Calophyllum inophyllum (with oceanic and vertebrate dispersal), C. soulattri (vertebrate dispersal), and Terminalia catappa had substantially longer flotation than their inland endemic relatives C. pelewense and T. crassipes. This supports the "Loss of dispersal ability" hypothesis for Calophyllum though, for Terminalia, additional phylogenetic information is needed to determine T. crassipes' sister species. Seed flotation in the widespread, oceanic dispersed Pandanus tectorius did not significantly differ from that of the Palau endemics P. palawensis and P. aimiriikensis. Our results highlight that differences among taxa in dispersal modes, speciation modes, and their interactions may influence the assembly of island floras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The loss of large animals due to overhunting and habitat loss potentially affects tropical tree populations and carbon cycling. Trees reliant on large‐bodied seed dispersers are thought to be particularly negatively affected by defaunation. But besides seed dispersal, defaunation can also increase or decrease seed predation. It remains unclear how these different defaunation effects on early life stages ultimately affect tree population dynamics. We reviewed the literature on how tropical animal loss affects different plant life stages, and we conducted a meta‐analysis of how defaunation affects seed predation. We used this information to parameterize models that altered matrix projection models from a suite of tree species to simulate defaunation‐caused changes in seed dispersal and predation. We assessed how applying these defaunation effects affected population growth rates. On average, population‐level effects of defaunation were negligible, suggesting that defaunation may not cause the massive reductions in forest carbon storage that have been predicted. In contrast to previous hypotheses, we did not detect an effect of seed size on changes in seed predation rates. The change in seed predation did not differ significantly between exclosure experiments and observational studies, although the results of observational studies were far more variable. Although defaunation surely affects certain tree taxa, species that benefit or are harmed by it and net changes in forest carbon storage cannot currently be predicted based on available data. Further research on how factors such as seed predation vary across tree species and defaunation scenarios is necessary for understanding cascading changes in species composition and diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community trait assembly, the formation of distributions of phenotypic characteristics across coexisting species, can occur via two main processes: filtering of trait distributions from the regional pool and in situ phenotypic evolution in local communities. But the relative importance of these processes remains unclear, largely because of the difficulty in determining the timing of evolutionary trait changes and biogeographic dispersal events in phylogenies. We assessed evolutionary and biogeographic transitions in woody plant species across the Indo-Malay archipelago, a series of island groups where the same plant lineages interact with different seed disperser and seed predator assemblages. Fruit size in 2,650 taxa spanning the angiosperm tree of life tended to be smaller in the Sulawesi and Maluku island groups, where frugivores are less diverse and smaller bodied, than in the regional source pool. While numerous plant lineages (not just small-fruited ones) reached the isolated islands, colonists tended to be the smaller-fruited members of each clade. Nearly all of the evolutionary transitions to smaller fruit size predated, often substantially, organismal dispersal to the islands. Our results suggest that filtering rather than within-island evolution largely determined the distribution of fruit sizes in these regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The numerous explanations for why Earth's biodiversity is concentrated at low latitudes fail to explain variation in the strength and even direction of the gradient through deep time. Consequently, we do not know if today's gradient is representative of what might be expected on other planets or is merely an idiosyncrasy of Earth's history. We propose a hierarchy of factors driving the latitudinal distribution of diversity: (i) over geologically long time spans, diversity is largely predicted by climate; (ii) when climatic gradients are shallow, diversity tracks habitat area; and (iii) historical contingencies linked to niche conservatism have geologically short-term, transient influence at most. Thus, latitudinal diversity gradients, although variable in strength and direction, are largely predictable on our planet and possibly others. Myriad hypotheses try to explain the current latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), with biodiversity concentrated in the tropics during a colder climate today than has been present for most of the history of complex life. When Earth was hotter, however, LDGs were often flat or temperate-peaked. Variation in the strength and direction of LDGs through deep time can be explained by the direct effects of climate, with habitat area becoming important when climatic gradients are shallow; less predictable factors such as organismal evolution to past climatic conditions – tropical conservatism – have short-term, transient influence at most. Enhanced collaboration between ecologists and paleobiologists, bringing together data from both fields, is critical to better understand fundamental processes on our planet and possibly others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of protected areas (PAs) is a central strategy for global biodiversity conservation. While the role of PAs in protecting habitat has been highlighted, their effectiveness at protecting mammal communities remains unclear. We analyzed a global dataset from over 8671 camera traps in 23 countries on four continents that detected 321 medium‐ to large‐bodied mammal species. We found a strong positive correlation between mammal taxonomic diversity and the proportion of a surveyed area covered by PAs at a global scale (β = 0.39, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.19–0.60) and in Indomalaya (β = 0.69, 95% CI = 0.19–1.2), as well as between functional diversity and PA coverage in the Nearctic (β = 0.47, 95% CI = 0.09–0.85), after controlling for human disturbances and environmental variation. Functional diversity was only weakly (and insignificantly) correlated with PA coverage at the global scale (β = 0.22, 95% CI = −0.02–0.46), pointing to a need to better understand the functional response of mammal communities to protection. Our study provides important evidence of the global effectiveness of PAs in conserving terrestrial mammals and emphasizes the critical role of area‐based conservation in a post‐2020 biodiversity framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitigating the massive impacts of defaunation on natural ecosystems requires understanding and predicting hunting effort across the landscape. But such understanding has been hindered by the difficulty of assessing the movement patterns of hunters in thick forests and across complex terrain. We statistically tested hypotheses about the spatial distribution of hunting with circuit theory and structural equation models. We used a data set of >7000 known kill locations in Guyana and hunter movement models to test these methods. Comparing models with different resistance layers (i.e., different estimates of how terrain and land cover influence human movement speed) showed that rivers, on average, limited movement rather than serving as transport arteries. Moreover, far more kills occurred close to villages than in remote areas. This, combined with the lack of support for structural equation models that included latent terms for prey depletion driven by past overhunting, suggests that kill locations in this system tended to be driven by where hunters were currently foraging rather than by influences of historical harvest. These analyses are generalizable to a variety of ecosystems, species, and data types, providing a powerful way of enhancing maps and predictions of hunting effort across complex landscapes. Article impact statement: Locations of bushmeat hunter kill sites in Guyana seem driven by where hunters go currently rather than by historical influences of harvest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity is declining worldwide. Because species interact with one another and with their environment, losses of particular organisms alter the function of ecosystems. Our understanding of the global rates and specific causes of functional decline remains limited, however. Species losses also reduce the cumulative amount of extant evolutionary history ("phylogenetic diversity" [PD]) in communities--our biodiversity heritage. Here we provide a global assessment of how each known anthropogenic threat is driving declines in functional diversity (FD) and PD, using terrestrial mammals as a case study. We find that habitat loss and harvest (e.g., legal hunting, poaching, snaring) are by far the biggest drivers of ongoing FD and PD loss. Declines in FD in high-biodiversity countries, particularly in Southeast Asia and South America, are greater than would be expected if species losses were random with respect to ecological function. Among functional guilds, herbivores are disproportionately likely to be declining from harvest, with important implications for plant communities and nutrient cycling. Frugivores are particularly likely to be declining from both harvest and habitat loss, with potential ramifications for seed dispersal and even forest carbon storage. Globally, phylogenetically unique species do not have an elevated risk of decline, but in areas such as Australia and parts of Southeast Asia, both habitat loss and harvest are biased toward phylogenetically unique species. Enhanced conservation efforts, including a renewed focus on harvest sustainability, are urgently needed to prevent the deterioration of ecosystem function, especially in the South American and equatorial Asian tropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mammalian spatial and temporal activity patterns can vary depending on foraging behavior or the perception of predation or competition risk among species. These behaviors may in turn be altered by human influences such as defaunation. Herein, we evaluate whether frugivores avoid areas with high visitation rates by potential predators or competitors, and whether this avoidance changes in areas with different degrees of defaunation. We installed 189 cameras under fruit trees in six areas of the Atlantic Forest, Brazil, that differ in the abundance of top predators and large frugivores. Small predators and small frugivores were more frequent at night while large frugivores were more frequent during the day, but small frugivores visited and spent less time at fruiting trees on brighter nights, unlike large predators and large frugivores. Small frugivores also were less frequent in areas with high visitation by large frugivores and more frequent in highly defaunated areas. Our results suggest that the dynamics among mammalian functional groups varied according to diel patterns, potential competitors, and defaunation. We highlight the importance of understanding how species interactions are changing in areas exposed to strong human impacts to mitigate the indirect effects of defaunation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsustainable hunting is emptying forests of large animals around the world, but current understanding of how human foraging spreads across landscapes has been stymied by data deficiencies and cryptic hunter behaviour. Unlike other global threats to biodiversity like deforestation, climate change and overfishing, maps of wild meat hunters' movements—often based on forest accessibility—typically cover small scales and are rarely validated with real-world observations. Using camera trapping data from rainforests across Malaysian Borneo, we show that while hunter movements are strongly correlated with the accessibility of different parts of the landscape, accessibility measures are most informative when they integrate fine-scale habitat features like topography and land cover. Measures of accessibility naive to fine-scale habitat complexity, like distance to the nearest road or settlement, generate poor approximations of hunters' movements. In comparison, accessibility as measured by high-resolution movement models based on circuit theory provides vastly better reflections of real-world foraging movements. Our results highlight that simple models incorporating fine-scale landscape heterogeneity can be powerful tools for understanding and predicting widespread threats to biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable maps of species distributions are fundamental for biodiversity research and conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) range maps are widely recognized as authoritative representations of species' geographic limits, yet they might not always align with actual occurrence data. In recent area of habitat (AOH) maps, areas that are not habitat have been removed from IUCN ranges to reduce commission errors, but their concordance with actual species occurrence also remains untested. We tested concordance between occurrences recorded in camera trap surveys and predicted occurrences from the IUCN and AOH maps for 510 medium‐ to large‐bodied mammalian species in 80 camera trap sampling areas. Across all areas, cameras detected only 39% of species expected to occur based on IUCN ranges and AOH maps; 85% of the IUCN only mismatches occurred within 200 km of range edges. Only 4% of species occurrences were detected by cameras outside IUCN ranges. The probability of mismatches between cameras and the IUCN range was significantly higher for smaller‐bodied mammals and habitat specialists in the Neotropics and Indomalaya and in areas with shorter canopy forests. Our findings suggest that range and AOH maps rarely underrepresent areas where species occur, but they may more often overrepresent ranges by including areas where a species may be absent, particularly at range edges. We suggest that combining range maps with data from ground‐based biodiversity sensors, such as camera traps, provides a richer knowledge base for conservation mapping and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses outlook for the creation of an assisted colonization protocol by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Topics explored include the possible contribution of assisted colonization to species conservation, the concerns of some scientists over the possibility that some translocated species may demonstrate invasiveness, and an overview of the translocation guidelines of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Wild meat (or 'bushmeat') hunting is nearly ubiquitous across the tropics and is very often unsustainable—driving declines and extirpation of numerous mammal populations. Loss of these animals can alter the transport of nutrients within and between ecosystems. But whether the physical removal of vertebrate carcasses and the nutrients that they store can reduce overall nutrient availability in ecosystems has been little explored. At 32 sites on three continents, we show that annual phosphorus (P) loss via mammal exploitation was low relative to the rate of atmospheric P deposition. But at four sites in Africa and Southeast Asia, removal of P in the skeletons of hunted mammals exceeded the atmospheric input of this nutrient by 10-fold or more. Because P is the growth-limiting nutrient for many tropical terrestrial ecosystems and certain large mammals, the imbalance created by the removal of mammal biomass under very high hunting scenarios could reduce ecosystem carrying capacity if no compensatory P additions occur in the system. This biogeochemical perspective on bushmeat exploitation raises further concerns about harvest sustainability and human food security in areas where hunting rates are high and ecosystem P inputs low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental tenet of modern ecology and conservation science is the fact that species occurrence in habitat patches can be determined by patch area and isolation. But such island biogeographic models often poorly predict actual species occurrences in structurally complex landscapes that typify most ecosystems. Recent advances in circuit theory have enhanced estimates of species dispersal and can provide powerful ways to predict landscape-scale distribution of species assemblages through integration with island biogeography. Applying such an integrative analytical framework to 43 bird species in Tanzania improved model fit by an average of 2.2-fold over models where patch isolation was estimated without accounting for landscape matrix heterogeneity. This approach also allowed us to assess species-specific dispersal rates and quantify differences among land cover types in their permeability to animal movement. These results reaffirm the utility of foundational island biogeographic principles, yet with an important caveat. Two-thirds of the variance in species occurrence in habitat fragments can be explained simply by patch area and isolation, conditional on isolation explicitly accounting for the spatial configuration of different land cover types in the landscape matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the mechanisms driving declines in biodiversity with latitude requires assessing if there are ecological limits to the number of species that can coexist, and if these limits vary with latitude, both of which are long‐standing and currently debated questions. Here I show that diversification of North American mammals across the Cenozoic Era slowed as diversity increased. This damping of diversification rates indicates ecological limitation, which occurred even though diversity fluctuated through time and was almost never at an equilibrium 'saturation' point. The estimated environmental carrying capacity was correlated with global temperature positively at high latitudes and negatively at low latitudes. Geographical variation in how standing diversity affects diversification rates could help explain the latitudinal biodiversity gradient as well as changes in the strength of the gradient over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective conservation strategies must ensure that species remain not just extant, but able to maintain key roles in species interactions and in the maintenance of communities and ecosystems. Such ecological functions, however, have not been well incorporated into management or policy. We present a framework for quantifying ecological function that is complementary to population viability analysis (PVA) and that allows function to be integrated into strategic planning processes. Ecological function analysis (EFA) focuses on preventing secondary extinctions and maintaining ecosystem structure, biogeochemical processes, and resiliency. EFA can use a range of modeling approaches and, because most species interactions are relatively weak, EFA needs to be performed for relatively few species or functions, making it a realistic way to improve conservation management. Highlights Most current conservation strategies focus on preventing extinctions, but without explicit regard for the maintenance of sufficient abundance so that species can continue to interact with other species or impact the structure and function of their ecosystems. We develop the concepts and tools for ecological function analysis (EFA), to measure and quantify the roles that species play. EFA focuses on preventing cascading extinctions as well as maintaining ecosystem resiliency and critical biogeochemical processes. Because relatively few species have such strong ecosystem roles, EFA needs to be considered for manageable numbers of species and functions. EFA is flexible and adaptive, making it a critical complement to species-based approaches in improving conservation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsustainable hunting is widespread globally, generating one of the primary threats to tropical vertebrates but providing important revenue for many people. Recent evidence suggests that by removing seed dispersing vertebrates, overhunting can induce shifts in tree species composition that reduce the amount of carbon stored in the forest. I developed a bioeconomic model to assess the conditions under which hunting might lead to the loss of forest carbon, and to compare the revenue lost via carbon erosion to that gained from bushmeat procurement. The potential long-term decline in forest biomass and the uncertain degree of ecological complementarity among frugivore species had the strongest influence on the amount of carbon lost via overhunting. Parameters related to frugivore population dynamics and the economics of the hunting system had relatively little influence. Total revenue in the system was maximized when hunter effort and the opportunity costs of hunting were low, suggesting that limiting hunting effort could maximize income for hunters by avoiding the depletion of both game species and potentially saleable carbon credits. These results highlight that enhanced understanding of long-term carbon responses to hunting in different tropical forests could help increase revenue for forest-dwelling people and contribute to global climate change mitigation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large, fruit-eating vertebrates have been lost from many of the world's ecosystems. The ecological consequences of this defaunation can be severe, but the evolutionary consequences are nearly unknown because it remains unclear whether frugivores exert strong selection on fruit traits. I assessed the macroevolution of fruit traits in response to variation in the diversity and size of seed-dispersing vertebrates. Across the Indo-Malay Archipelago, many of the same plant lineages have been exposed to very different assemblages of seed-dispersing vertebrates. Phylogenetic analysis of >400 plant species in 41 genera and five families revealed that average fruit size tracks the taxonomic and functional diversity of frugivorous birds and mammals. Fruit size was 40.2-46.5% smaller in the Moluccas and Sulawesi (respectively), with relatively depauperate assemblages of mostly small-bodied animals, than in the Sunda Region (Borneo, Sumatra, and Peninsular Malaysia), with a highly diverse suite of large and small animals. Fruit color, however, was unrelated to vertebrate diversity or to the representation of birds versus mammals in the frugivore assemblage. Overhunting of large animals, nearly ubiquitous in tropical forests, could strongly alter selection pressures on plants, resulting in widespread, although trait-specific, morphologic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cassowaries are important seed dispersers in tropical rainforests of New Guinea, but little is known about their population ecology or their responses to human disturbance. We used camera traps to measure the occurrence, local abundance, and activity patterns of northern cassowaries Casuarius unappendiculatus in lowland forests near Nimbokrang, Papua, and dwarf cassowaries Casuarius bennetti in the Arfak Mountains, West Papua. Our goals were to assess human impacts on cassowaries at multiple spatial scales and to measure their activity patterns over an elevational divide. At fine spatial scales local abundance of cassowaries was strongly reduced in areas frequented by humans. At larger spatial scales the distance to the nearest village or drivable road did not affect local abundance but altered the stage structure of the individuals detected, with a higher proportion of juveniles relative to adults. Local abundance of cassowaries was unrelated to site usage by introduced pigs. Both populations studied were strongly diurnal and their activity patterns were not significantly different. Efforts to control hunting remain critical to sustaining cassowaries and the seed dispersal services they provide. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The responses of lowland tropical communities to climate change will critically influence global biodiversity but remain poorly understood. If species in these systems are unable to tolerate warming, the communities—currently the most diverse on Earth—may become depauperate (‘biotic attrition’). In response to temperature changes, animals can adjust their distribution in space or their activity in time, but these two components of the niche are seldom considered together. We assessed the spatio-temporal niches of rainforest mammal species in Borneo across gradients in elevation and temperature. Most species are not predicted to experience changes in spatio-temporal niche availability, even under pessimistic warming scenarios. Responses to temperature are not predictable by phylogeny but do appear to be trait-based, being much more variable in smaller-bodied taxa. General circulation models and weather station data suggest unprecedentedly high midday temperatures later in the century; predicted responses to this warming among small-bodied species range from 9% losses to 6% gains in spatio-temporal niche availability, while larger species have close to 0% predicted change. Body mass may therefore be a key ecological trait influencing the identity of climate change winners and losers. Mammal species composition will probably change in some areas as temperatures rise, but full-scale biotic attrition this century appears unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the links between the science and policy of habitat corridors to better understand how corridors can be implemented effectively. As a case study, we focused on a suite of landscape-scale connectivity plans in tropical and subtropical Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, and Bhutan). The process of corridor designation may be more efficient if the scientific determination of optimal corridor locations and arrangement is synchronized in time with political buy-in and establishment of policies to create corridors. Land tenure and the intactness of existing habitat in the region are also important to consider because optimal connectivity strategies may be very different if there are few, versus many, political jurisdictions (including commercial and traditional land tenures) and intact versus degraded habitat between patches. Novel financing mechanisms for corridors include bed taxes, payments for ecosystem services, and strategic forest certifications. Gaps in knowledge of effective corridor design include an understanding of how corridors, particularly those managed by local communities, can be protected from degradation and unsustainable hunting. There is a critical need for quantitative, data-driven models that can be used to prioritize potential corridors or multicorridor networks based on their relative contributions to long-term metacommunity persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elucidating how dispersal and landscape connectivity influence metacommunity stability will shed light on natural processes structuring ecosystems and help prioritize conservation actions in an increasingly fragmented world. Much of the theoretical and mathematical development of the metacommunity concept has been based on simplified experimental systems or simulated data. We still have limited understanding of how variation in the habitat matrix and species-specific differences in dispersal ability contribute to metacommunity dynamics in heterogeneous landscapes. We model a metacommunity of rainforest mammals in Borneo, a tropical biodiversity hotspot, where protected areas are increasingly isolated by ongoing habitat disturbance and loss. We employ a combination of hierarchical models of local abundance, circuit-theory-based dispersal analysis, and metapopulation models. Our goal was to understand which landscape links were the most important to metapopulation persistence and metacommunity stability. Links were particularly important if they were short and connected two large patches. This was partly because only the very shortest links could be traversed by poorly dispersing species, including small herbivores such as chevrotains ( Tragulus spp.) and porcupines. Links that join large patches into a 'super-patch' may also promote island-mainland rather than Levins-type metapopulation dynamics for good dispersers, particularly large carnivores such as clouded leopards ( Neofelis diardi) and sun bears ( Helarctos malayanus), reducing metapopulation extinction risk and thereby enhancing metacommunity stability. Link importance to metacommunity stability was highly correlated between heterogeneous and homogeneous landscapes. But link importance to metapopulation capacity varied strongly across species, and the correlation between heterogeneous and homogeneous landscape matrix scenarios was low for poorly dispersing taxa. This suggests that the environmental conditions in the area between habitat patches, the landscape matrix, is important for assessing certain individual species but less so for understanding the stability of the entire metacommunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans influence tropical rainforest animals directly via exploitation and indirectly via habitat disturbance. Bushmeat hunting and logging occur extensively in tropical forests and have large effects on particular species. But how they alter animal diversity across landscape scales and whether their impacts are correlated across species remain less known. We used spatially widespread measurements of mammal occurrence across Malaysian Borneo and recently developed multispecies hierarchical models to assess the species richness of medium- to large-bodied terrestrial mammals while accounting for imperfect detection of all species. Hunting was associated with 31% lower species richness. Moreover, hunting remained high even where richness was very low, highlighting that hunting pressure persisted even in chronically overhunted areas. Newly logged sites had 11% lower species richness than unlogged sites, but sites logged >10 years previously had richness levels similar to those in old-growth forest. Hunting was a more serious long-term threat than logging for 91% of primate and ungulate species. Hunting and logging impacts across species were not correlated across taxa. Negative impacts of hunting were the greatest for common mammalian species, but commonness versus rarity was not related to species-specific impacts of logging. Direct human impacts appeared highly persistent and lead to defaunation of certain areas. These impacts were particularly severe for species of ecological importance as seed dispersers and herbivores. Indirect impacts were also strong but appeared to attenuate more rapidly than previously thought. The lack of correlation between direct and indirect impacts across species highlights that multifaceted conservation strategies may be needed for mammal conservation in tropical rainforests, Earth's most biodiverse ecosystems. Correlación y Persistencia de los Impactos de la Caza y la Tala sobre los Mamíferos de los Bosques Tropicales [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habitat corridors are important tools for maintaining connectivity in increasingly fragmented landscapes, but generally they have been considered in single-species approaches. Corridors intended to facilitate the movement of multiple species could increase persistence of entire communities, but at the likely cost of being less efficient for any given species than a corridor intended specifically for that species. There have been few tests of the trade-offs between single- and multispecies corridor approaches. We assessed single-species and multispecies habitat corridors for 5 threatened mammal species in tropical forests of Borneo. We generated maps of the cost of movement across the landscape for each species based on the species' local abundance as estimated through hierarchical modeling of camera-trap data with biophysical and anthropogenic covariates. Elevation influenced local abundance of banded civets ( Hemigalus derbyanus) and sun bears ( Helarctos malayanus). Increased road density was associated with lower local abundance of Sunda clouded leopards ( Neofelis diardi) and higher local abundance of sambar deer ( Rusa unicolor). Pig-tailed macaque ( Macaca nemestrina) local abundance was lower in recently logged areas. An all-species-combined connectivity scenario with least-cost paths and 1 km buffers generated total movement costs that were 27% and 23% higher for banded civets and clouded leopards, respectively, than the connectivity scenarios for those species individually. A carnivore multispecies connectivity scenario, however, increased movement cost by 2% for banded civets and clouded leopards. Likewise, an herbivore multispecies scenario provided more effective connectivity than the all-species-combined scenario for sambar and macaques. We suggest that multispecies habitat connectivity plans be tailored to groups of ecologically similar, disturbance-sensitive species to maximize their effectiveness. Evaluación de la Conectividad de Terrenos Multiespecie en una Comunidad Tropical de Mamíferos [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective logging is one of the most widespread disturbances to tropical forests worldwide, yet its impacts on large mammals remain poorly understood. We used camera trapping and hierarchical models to compare local abundance of a variety of terrestrial mammal species in Borneo between selectively logged and unlogged forest, and to assess the impacts of edge effects. Our methods circumvent confounding factors that have plagued previous assessments of logging impacts by explicitly accounting for differential detection probability among habitats, separating the effects of hunting from those of logging-induced habitat disturbance, and explicitly measuring the distances over which edge effects occur. We found that mammalian carnivore species were either largely or completely confined to primary forest, although habitat use for the Sunda clouded leopard ( Neofelis diardi ) increased toward the ecotone. Several large ungulates, however, were either completely (elephant Elephas maximus and banteng Bos javanicus ) or mostly (sambar Rusa unicolor ) found in logged forest. This suggests that, in the absence of hunting, disturbed habitats can be important for the conservation of certain endangered and vulnerable species. Sambar and muntjac ( Muntiacus spp.) both strongly avoided habitat edge in logged forest and primary forest, respectively. Lower habitat use by these species persisted 2–4 km from the habitat boundary – farther than has been observed for the infiltration of other edge effects such as canopy desiccation. Such avoidance of ecotones implies that 20–40% of the intact primary forest habitat in our study area is actually degraded “edge habitat” from the point of view of primary forest specialists. Our results suggest that, while selectively logged forests retain conservation value for certain large mammal species, it is critical that thresholds in logging intensity be identified so as to avoid declines in habitat use by taxa, such as carnivores, which appear intolerant of intensive logging pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extinctions beget further extinctions when species lose obligate mutualists, predators, prey, or hosts. Here, we develop a conceptual model of species and community attributes affecting secondary extinction likelihood, incorporating mechanisms that buffer organisms against partner loss. Specialized interactors, including ‘cryptic specialists’ with diverse but nonredundant partner assemblages, incur elevated risk. Risk is also higher for species that cannot either evolve new traits following partner loss or obtain novel partners in communities reorganizing under changing environmental conditions. Partner loss occurs alongside other anthropogenic impacts; multiple stressors can circumvent ecological buffers, enhancing secondary extinction risk. Stressors can also offset each other, reducing secondary extinction risk, a hitherto unappreciated phenomenon. This synthesis suggests improved conservation planning tactics and critical directions for research on secondary extinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When humans reduce top carnivore abundance in insular systems, herbivore populations may increase, with cascading impacts on the community. But the prevalence of such “trophic release” effects in non-insular ecosystems remains little known, particularly in tropical ecosystems. We assessed whether areas with low top carnivore abundance were associated with greater abundance of herbivores across seven rainforest study areas in Malaysian Borneo. We deployed 134 camera-trap stations and analyzed the resulting photographic detections from 16,608 trap-days using multi-species occupancy models that estimate abundance while accounting for imperfect detectability. Estimated local abundance of Sunda clouded leopards (Neofelis diardi), the apex mammalian predator, varied from 0.0 to 3.5 individuals per camera location. Clouded leopard abundance was not negatively correlated with the abundance of any of the four prey species that we analyzed. Rather, sites with few or no clouded leopards also had the lowest estimated abundance of pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina). Estimated abundance of muntjac (Muntiacus spp.) and mousedeer (Tragulus spp.) was statistically unrelated to estimated clouded leopard abundance. Bearded pig (Sus barbatus) abundance was likewise unaffected by predator abundance, but pigs appear to live in larger groups when clouded leopards are common, possibly to better defend their young. We found no evidence of trophic release, an important conservation threat in other areas, in this ecosystem, particularly relative to the massive impacts of agricultural conversion, habitat degradation, and unsustainable wildlife exploitation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this article, the author of the article "Are wolves saving Yellowstone's aspen? A landscape-level test of a behaviorally mediated trophic cascade" comments on review of the article that was published in 2010 of the journal.

Ecological restoration typically focuses on promoting vegetation recovery in degraded habitat or reintroducing endangered animals to enhance their regional or global persistence. Here, we argue that attention should also be devoted to vertebrate reintroductions in overhunted but floristically intact tropical forests in order to prevent insidious regime shifts in these systems. Growing evidence suggests that tropical forests deprived of seed-dispersing animals exhibit replacement of fleshy fruiting trees by species with abiotic seed dispersal. Left unchecked, this process could eventually render the forest uninhabitable by frugivores through reduced density and diversity of their food plants. In tropical areas where hunting can be controlled, we contend that frugivore reintroduction, regulation of wild fruit harvest by humans, and outplanting of native fruiting trees should be deployed as management tools long before the systems are in need of traditional habitat restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behaviorally mediated trophic cascades (BMTCs) occur when the fear of predation among herbivores enhances plant productivity. Based primarily on systems involving small-bodied predators, BMTCs have been proposed as both strong and ubiquitous in natural ecosystems. Recently, however, synthetic work has suggested that the existence of BMTCs may be mediated by predator hunting mode, whereby passive (sit-and-wait) predators have much stronger effects than active (coursing) predators. One BMTC that has been proposed for a wide-ranging active predator system involves the reintroduction of wolves (Canis lupus) to Yellowstone National Park, USA, which is thought to be leading to a recovery of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) by causing elk (Cervus elaphus) to avoid foraging in risky areas. Although this BMTC has been generally accepted and highly popularized, it has never been adequately tested. We assessed whether wolves influence aspen by obtaining detailed demographic data on aspen stands using tree rings and by monitoring browsing levels in experimental elk exciosures arrayed across a gradient of predation risk for three years. Our study demonstrates that the historical failure of aspen to regenerate varied widely among stands (last recruitment year ranged from 1892 to 1956), and our data do not indicate an abrupt cessation of recruitment. This pattern of recruitment failure appears more consistent with a gradual increase in elk numbers rather than a rapid behavioral shift in elk foraging following wolf extirpation. In addition, our estimates of relative survivorship of young browsable aspen indicate that aspen are not currently recovering in Yellowstone, even in the presence of a large wolf population. Finally, in an experimental test of the BMTC hypothesis we found that the impacts of elk browsing on aspen demography are not diminished in sites where elk are at higher risk of predation by wolves. These findings suggest the need to further evaluate how trophic cascades are mediated by predator-prey life history and ecological context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsustainable hunting does more than threaten wildlife populations and human livelihood – Carlos Peres and colleagues recently showed that it can also reduce how much carbon the forest stores. Maintaining primates and other important seed dispersing animals in tropical forests could be an important piece of the climate change mitigation puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection of bedding sites is important for the ecology of ruminants, but has mainly been described for temperate species. Here we assessed the bed site selection of two Southeast Asian tropical deer, red muntjac and sambar, in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. We surveyed transects weekly for 10 weeks each in 2003 and 2004 to locate bed sites, and compared the slope, aspect, and forest canopy cover of bed site locations between the two species and with available habitat. As with most temperate deer, muntjac and sambar both avoided sites with low levels of cover for their bed site locations; this could be for concealment or thermoregulation. Sambar also selected flatter sites than would be expected by the availability of topographic slopes; this could be to reduce the energy associated with getting to and from bed sites, or to increase long-range visibility from sites. Muntjac and sambar differed in their choice of aspects for bed sites; muntjac disproportionately chose west-facing areas, while sambar chose east-facing locations. This could represent a strategy by which one species avoids the other, or else differential resource requirements between the two species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many plants interact with groups of mutualist pollinators and seed dispersers. A key issue for both basic ecology and conservation is whether the different species within these guilds of mutualist animals are functionally equivalent. Comparing the relative effects of sympatric mutualists is important for understanding the evolution of multispecies mutualisms and for predicting mutualism stability in the face of anthropogenic change. However, empirical comparisons of the population-level impacts of mutualist animals on their host plant are rare, particularly for seed dispersal mutualisms in species-rich ecosystems. We compared the influence of three seed-dispersing tropical mammals, lar gibbons (Hylobates lar), sambar deer (Rusa unicolor), and red muntjac deer (Muntiacus muntjak), on the demography of a shared host tree in Thailand, Choerospondias axillaris (Anacardiaceae). Sambar and muntjac dispersed far more C. axillaris seeds than did gibbons. While sambar deposited many seeds under female tree canopies, muntjac were the only disperser to move seeds to open microhabitats, where C. axillaris seed germination, seedling survival, and initial growth are enhanced. Using stage-based population models, we assessed how disperser-specific seed dispersal, variation in the frequency of canopy gap formation, and their interaction influenced the potential population growth of C. axillaris. Large differences in dispersal quantity and small differences in dispersal quality among sambar and gibbons resulted in similar and negligible impacts on the tree's population dynamics. Muntjac, by taking some of the seeds to open microhabitats, are projected to have a greater positive impact on C. axillaris demography than either sambar or gibbons. Model comparisons of population-level species impacts may allow us to predict which ecological interactions are at risk from loss of critical species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary goal of monitoring wildlife populations is the estimation of population growth rate, λ. Two common methods by which biologists estimate λ are demographic studies of marked individuals, which tend to be expensive and labor-intensive, and estimators derived from time series of population indices. We compare grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) population growth rates in the Banff ecosystem (Alberta, Canada) from a published demographic study to estimates from concurrent monitoring of an index of population size, the number of females with cubs-of-the-year (Fcub). We estimated population trends by transforming the index into 2 population estimators (bias-corrected Chao and summation), and used each to estimate λ. The 95% confidence intervals of λ from the 2 monitoring-based estimators overlapped the point estimate of the demographic study. Precision of the bias-corrected Chao estimator was very low (95% CI of λ = 0.572-1.679); its application to the time-series used here is essentially fruitless. Precision of the summation estimator (95% CI of λ = 0.847-1.137) and the demographic study (0.99-1.09) were higher, but the CI of the former at least could be artificially narrow. Because all estimates were close to 1.00, the long-term fate of this population may depend critically on subtle changes in growth rate and on environmental stochasticity. Given that long-term demographic studies are not feasible in this system, population monitoring may be a worthwhile way to assess population dynamics. However, given the low power of many monitoring techniques to detect trends and the low precision of the Fcub estimators in particular, long times-series and explicit measures to remove sampling variance should be employed to increase trend estimate precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indices or density estimators derived from counts of scat can be used as indirect measures of animal population density. An important issue in these studies is that scat decay rates vary across habitats and seasons. This is an often overlooked source of bias when using scat-based indices to make comparisons of relative abundance among sites or over time. I propose a simple method by which experimentally determined scat-persistence rates can be used as a correction factor in such indices. This measured persistence rate also serves as an important parameter in models that convert scat count data into population estimators. I test this method in a relative abundance survey of sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) for 6 sites across 2 national parks in northern Thailand. Using the correction factor changed the qualitative predictions of the abundance survey by altering the rank of the sites ordered by estimated sambar density. The ratio of corrected:uncorrected index values, which would stay constant across sites if there was no habitat-based variability in scat-persistence rates, changed by a factor of 2.7 when measured across sites and by 1.6 when measured across parks. This suggests that the application of persistence-rate correction factors could reduce the bias of scat-based index or estimator surveys by specifically accounting for decay rate variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation outcomes could be greatly enhanced if strategies addressing anthropogenic land‐use change considered the impacts of these changes on entire communities as well as on individual species. Examining how species interactions change across gradients of habitat disturbance allows us to predict the cascading consequences of species extinctions and the response of ecological networks to environmental change.We conducted the first detailed study of changes in a commensalist network of mammals and dung beetles across an environmental disturbance gradient, from primary tropical forest to plantations, which varied in above‐ground carbon density (ACD) and mammal communities.Mammal diversity changed only slightly across the gradient, remaining high even in oil palm plantations and fragmented forest. Dung beetle species richness, however, declined in response to lower ACD and was particularly low in plantations and the most disturbed forest sites. Three of the five network metrics (nestedness, network specialization and functionality) were significantly affected by changes in dung beetle species richness and ACD, but mammal diversity was not an important predictor of network structure. Overall, the interaction networks remained structurally and functionally similar across the gradient, only becoming simplified (i.e. with fewer dung beetle species and fewer interactions) in the most disturbed sites.We suggest that the high diversity of mammals, even in disturbed forests, combined with the generalist feeding patterns of dung beetles, confer resilience to the commensalist dung beetle–mammal networks.This study highlights the importance of protecting logged and fragmented forests to maintain interaction networks and potentially prevent extinction cascades in human‐modified systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of shrubs and trees across high‐latitude ecosystems is one of the most dramatic ecological manifestations of climate change. Most of the work quantifying these changes has been done in small areas and over relatively recent time scales. These land‐cover transitions are highly spatially variable, and we have limited understanding of the factors underlying this variation. We use repeat photography to generate a data set of land‐cover changes in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, stretching back a century and spanning a range of edaphic, topographic, and climatic conditions. Most land‐cover classes were quite stable, with low probabilities of transitioning to other land‐cover types. The advance of woody vegetation into low‐stature tundra, and the spread of conifer trees into shrub‐dominated areas, were both more likely at low elevations and in areas without permafrost. Permafrost also reduced the likelihood of herbaceous vegetation transitioning to woody cover. Exceptions to the general trend of relative stability included nearly all (96%) of the broadleaf forest–dominated areas being invaded by conifers, an expected successional trajectory, and many open gravel river bars (17.8%) transitioning to thick shrubs. These floodplain areas were distinctly not at equilibrium, as only 0.1% of shrub‐dominated areas converted to gravel. Warming temperatures in coming decades and concomitant declines in the extent of permafrost are predicted to enhance the spread of woody vegetation in Denali further, but only by ~3%. Land‐cover transitions, notably the rapid advance of trees and shrubs observed in other studies, could be less likely and more spatially heterogeneous here than in other high‐latitude systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective logging is very widespread across the tropics and can alter the habitat for myriad wildlife species. But while many studies have assessed the impacts of past logging on forest animals, far fewer have investigated how species respond to logging while the timber operations are actually going on. This is an important knowledge gap because, considering the prevalence of logging across the world, numerous areas will be undergoing active extraction at any given time. We compared the occurrence and diel activity patterns of individual species of medium- to large-bodied terrestrial mammals, as well as the richness of the entire assemblage, among sites that were either unlogged, had been logged historically, or had ongoing 'reduced impact' timber extraction in the Kapit Region of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. We found no significant differences in estimated occupancy or activity patterns of particular species, or in overall species richness, among logging treatments. Across sites, species richness in this area appeared to be as high as or higher than in many other parts of the state, including some protected areas. Though monitoring is needed to assess potential long-term impacts, our results suggest that reduced-impact logging could allow economic development that is sustainable for many wildlife populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periods of extreme food abundance, such as irregular masting events, can dramatically affect animal populations and communities, but the extent to which anthropogenic disturbances alter animal responses to mast events is not clear. In South‐East Asia, dipterocarp trees reproduce in mast fruiting events every 2–10 years in some of the largest masting events on the planet. These trees, however, are targeted for selective logging, reducing the intensity of fruit production and potentially affecting multiple trophic levels.Moreover, animal responses to resource pulse events have largely been studied in systems where the major mast consumers have been extirpated. We sought to evaluate the influence of human‐induced habitat disturbance on animal responses to masting in a system where key mast consumers remain extant.We used motion‐triggered camera traps to quantify terrestrial mammal and bird occurrences in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, relative to variation in fruit biomass from 69 plant families during a major (2014) and minor (2015) masting event and a non‐mast year (2013), in both logged and unlogged forests.Bearded pigs (Sus barbatus) showed the clearest responses to masting and occurrence rates were highest in unlogged forest in the year following the major mast, suggesting that the pulse in fruit availability increased immigration or reproduction. We also detected local‐scale spatial tracking of dipterocarp fruits in bearded pigs in unlogged forest, while this was equivocal in other species. In contrast, pigs and other vertebrate taxa in our study showed limited response to spatial or temporal variation in fruit availability in logged forest.Our findings suggest that vertebrates, namely bearded pigs, may respond to masting via movement and increased reproduction, but that these responses may be attenuated by habitat disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented regarding the impact of hunting in the tropical forests of South America.

Animals can have both positive (e.g. via seed dispersal) and negative (e.g. via herbivory) impacts on plants. The net effects of these interactions remain difficult to predict and may be affected by overhunting and habitat disturbance, two widespread threats to tropical forests. Recent studies have documented their separate effects on plant recruitment but our understanding of how defaunation and logging interact to influence tropical tree communities is limited. From 2013 to 2016, we followed the fate of marked tree seedlings (n ¼ 1489) from 81 genera in and outside experimental plots. Our plots differentially excluded small, medium and large-bodied mammal herbivores in logged and unlogged forest in Malaysian Borneo. We assessed the effects of experimental defaunation and logging on taxonomic diversity and plant trait (wood density, specific leaf area, fruit size) composition of seedling communities. Although seedling mortality was highest in the presence of all mammal herbivores (44%), defaunation alone did not alter taxonomic diversity nor plant trait composition. However, herbivores (across all body sizes) significantly reduced mean fruit size across the seedling community over time (95% confidence interval (CI): 20.09 to 20.01), particularly in logged forest (95% CI: 20.12 to 20.003). Our findings suggest that impacts of mammal herbivores on plant communities may be greater in forests with a history of disturbance and could subsequently affect plant functional traits and ecological processes associated with forest regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although deforestation and forest degradation have long been considered the most significant threats to tropical biodiversity, across Southeast Asia (Northeast India, Indochina, Sundaland, Philippines) substantial areas of natural habitat have few wild animals (>1 kg), bar a few hunting-tolerant species. To document hunting impacts on vertebrate populations regionally, we conducted an extensive literature review, including papers in local journals and reports of governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Evidence from multiple sites indicated animal populations declined precipitously across the region since approximately 1980, and many species are now extirpated from substantial portions of their former ranges. Hunting is by far the greatest immediate threat to the survival of most of the region's endangered vertebrates. Causes of recent overhunting include improved access to forests and markets, improved hunting technology, and escalating demand for wild meat, wildlife-derived medicinal products, and wild animals as pets. Although hunters often take common species, such as pigs or rats, for their own consumption, they take rarer species opportunistically and sell surplus meat and commercially valuable products. There is also widespread targeted hunting of high-value species. Consequently, as currently practiced, hunting cannot be considered sustainable anywhere in the region, and in most places enforcement of protected-area and protected-species legislation is weak. The international community's focus on cross-border trade fails to address overexploitation of wildlife because hunting and the sale of wild meat is largely a local issue and most of the harvest is consumed in villages, rural towns, and nearby cities. In addition to improved enforcement, efforts to engage hunters and manage wildlife populations through sustainable hunting practices are urgently needed. Unless there is a step change in efforts to reduce wildlife exploitation to sustainable levels, the region will likely lose most of its iconic species, and many others besides, within the next few years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sarawak is the largest state in the megadiverse country of Malaysia. Its rich biodiversity is threatened by land-use change and hunting, with mammalian carnivores particularly affected. Data on the ecology, occurrence and distribution of small carnivores are crucial to inform their effective conservation, but no large-scale assessments have previously been conducted in Sarawak. Here we examine the status of the five species of felids in Sarawak based on data from camera-trap studies over 17 years (May 2003–February 2021) across 31 study areas, including protected areas of various sizes, production forests and forest matrix within oil palm plantations. Felids were detected at 39% of 845 camera stations. The marbled cat Pardofelis marmorata and Sunda clouded leopard Neofelis diardi had higher probabilities of occurrence in protected than unprotected areas, and vice versa for the leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis and bay cat Catopuma badia. The marbled and bay cats were mostly diurnal, and the leopard cat was predominantly nocturnal; activity patterns did not substantively differ between protected and unprotected sites. The probabilities of occurrence of marbled and bay cats increased with greater distance from roads. The leopard cat and flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps were more likely, and the clouded leopard less likely, to occur near rivers. Flat-headed cats preferred peat swamp forest, bay cats lowland forest, and marbled cats and clouded leopards occurred in both lowland and montane forest. Felids may tolerate higher elevations to avoid anthropogenic disturbance; therefore, it is critical to preserve lowland and mid-elevation habitats that provide refugia from climate change and the destruction of lowland habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of co-occurrence among species can help reveal the structure and assembly of ecological communities. However, studies have been limited by measuring co-occurrence in either space or time but not both simultaneously. This is especially problematic in systems such as masting forests where resources are highly variable, meaning that spatial use and co-occurrence patterns can change on fine spatiotemporal scales. We develop an analytical framework for assessing species co-occurrence at fine spatial and temporal scales simultaneously and apply these models to a camera trapping dataset from Borneo. We sought to determine how substantial variation in food availability across space and time affects co-occurrence among terrestrial vertebrates. We detect many significant, mostly positive, co-occurrence patterns among species, but almost entirely in unlogged forest and during dipterocarp mast years. The most strongly co-occurring pair of species, bearded pig (Sus barbatus) and sambar (Rusa unicolor), only positively co-occur in areas and years when fruit is locally abundant. Species occurrences in logged forest and non-mast years are mostly random with respect to other species. This suggests that frugivore–granivore species positively co-occur when resources are plentiful (i.e., large trees are present and fruiting), likely because they use the same resources; these patterns disappear when food availability is lower. Our approach demonstrates the utility of measuring co-occurrence in space and time together and highlights the importance of resource abundance for driving the co-occurrence structure of communities. Furthermore, our method could be broadly applied to other systems to assess fine-scale spatiotemporal patterns across a range of taxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many tropical mammals with important functional roles in forest ecosystems are threatened with extinction, yet how they respond to increasingly prevalent habitat disturbance, such as selective logging, is not well understood. We deployed 43 motion-triggered camera traps in 2013 and 2014 in unlogged forest and in a forest logged three decades previously in Malaysian Borneo. We used camera trap photographs to assess whether selective logging influenced the local abundance of medium to large-bodied ground-dwelling mammals. We focused our study on six locally common species: sambar deer, ( Rusa unicolor ), yellow muntjac ( Muntiacus atherodes ), chevrotains ( Tragulus spp.), banded civet ( Hemigalus derbyanus ), Malay civet ( Viverra tangalunga ), and pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina ). Occupancy models were used to estimate local abundance. None of the mammals in our study exhibited decreased abundance in logged forest, although yellow muntjac and pig-tailed macaque were associated with canopy height. Contiguous forest connects these two areas, allowing animal movement between them, potentially explaining the lack of responses. The elapsed time since logging may have further influenced our findings. The effects of logging on mammal local abundance may no longer detectable after 30 years. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of regenerating forest as habitat for medium- to large-sized mammal species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: For tens of millions of years, herbivorous megafauna were abundant across the globe, fulfilling important ecological roles including seed dispersal. Megafruits are very large fruits that are dispersed most effectively by megafauna. However, megafruits also occur in ecosystems where megafauna are extinct or were never present, emphasizing our incomplete understanding of megafauna–megafruit relationships. Here we use the complex biogeography of tropical Asia to investigate how megafruit diversity and traits are associated with the diversity of megafauna, smaller animals, and abiotic factors. Location: Tropical Asia, from the Indian subcontinent in the west to tropical China in the north to the Maluku archipelago (Indonesia) in the east. Time period: Late Pleistocene to the present day. Major taxa studied: Megafauna (body weight > 500 kg) that consume fruits, including stegodons, elephants, rhinoceroses, giant tapirs, and large bovids. Fleshy‐fruited plant species across the region with a fruit width > 40 mm (i.e., megafruits). Methods: We compiled a list of all megafruits along with selected plant, fruit, and seed traits in 16 subregions across tropical Asia. We explored biogeographical patterns in megafruit diversity and traits in relation to the diversities of past and present megafauna, large‐ and medium‐sized animals and abiotic factors (mean temperature, mean precipitation, precipitation seasonality, insularity). Results: We identified 496 megafruits in tropical Asia. Megafruit diversity was highest in subregions with high megafaunal diversity, particularly extant species. Megafruit traits were influenced most strongly by abiotic factors (mainly temperature and land area), and weakly by megafauna and smaller dispersers. Main conclusions: Our results are consistent with megafauna maintaining or responding to megafruit diversity, but variation in megafruit traits is primarily associated with abiotic factors. Given the massive megafaunal losses in tropical Asia since the Late Pleistocene, it is important to identify fruit traits that can increase megafauna‐dependence and thus vulnerability to these losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the changing role of funding sources in shaping conservation science in the United States, we analyzed acknowledgments from published studies, trends in research funding, and survey responses from conservation scientists. Although the U.S. federal government was the most frequently acknowledged source of support overall, U.S. foundations and NGOs were the predominant sources for tropical and socioeconomic research. Acknowledgments of foundation support for conservation research increased over the last two decades, while recognition of federal funds declined. Concordant trends in funding and acknowledgments indicated a changing landscape for conservation science, in which federal support has not kept pace with the growth in conservation research efforts or needs. Survey responses from conservation scientists about their funding sources were consistent with acknowledgment data, and most (64%) indicated that shifts in funding sources and amounts affected the type of research they conduct. Ongoing changes in the funding landscape shape the direction of conservation research and may make conservation science more vulnerable to economic recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas are critical to biodiversity conservation. Yet many protected areas around the world are very small, and population persistence can be compromised in small habitat patches, particularly for large species. But we do not know how small is too small for long-term population viability, or the degree to which habitat area effects vary with mammal body size, for most tropical species. Here, diversity and species occurrence were assessed in a small national park that has long been isolated from other forest patches. The two largest Bornean carnivores, the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) and sun bear (Helarctos malayanus), may be locally extinct, but 12 smaller carnivores appear to be persisting. The banded civet (Hemigalus derbyanus), the Malay civet (Viverra tangalunga) and the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) had relatively high occurrence rates and were found in all habitat types, though were more common in hill (banded civet) or lowland (common palm civet) forest (LF). Occurrence probabilities for all of these species and the common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) were lower in areas more accessible to humans. Detection rates and estimated diversity suggest that this park has a small carnivore assemblage equivalent to those of much larger areas. These are the first results demonstrating size-specific vulnerability to area effects in Southeast Asian carnivores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]