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In recent years, tree-ring databases have emerged as a remarkable resource for ecological research, allowing us to address ecological questions at unprecedented temporal and spatial scales. However, concerns regarding big tree-ring data limitations and risks have also surfaced, leading to questions about their potential to be representative of long-term forest responses. Here, we highlight three paths of action to improve on tree-ring databases in ecology: 1) Implementing consistent bias analyses in large dendroecological databases and promoting community-driven data to address data limitations, 2) Encouraging the integration of tree-ring data with other ecological datasets, and 3) Promoting theory-driven, mechanistic dendroecological research. These issues are increasingly important for tackling pressing cross-disciplinary research questions. Finally, although we focus here on tree ring databases, these points apply broadly across many aggregative databases in ecology., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In this perspective, we present and discuss four major causes of the worldwide nature conservation failure: 1) ideologies based on nature-culture dualism, 2) the bias prioritising forests in conservation, 3) the illusory objectiveness of selected biological indicators, and 4) the mismanagement of rural agricultural landscapes. All of these relate to ignorance of historical ecology and neglect of the role past plays in shaping landscapes and fostering biodiversity. These led to a false anthropology focussed on the broader human economy (including agriculture) as the absolute culprit of biodiversity loss. It is believed, therefore, that biodiversity preservation depends on conservation policies and actions providing protection against human activities, such as farming. In this way, nature conservation has been detached from the rich experiences of long and fruitful coexistence of people with other elements of nature. The bio-cultural legacy includes biodiversity-rich rural landscapes, whose habitats are often either neglected or wrongly interpreted as "remnants of natural ecosystems". Consequently, conservation efforts are frequently ineffective or worse still, counter-effective. In the face of policies favouring subsidised intensive agribusiness at the cost of destroying smallholder family farming, even expensive conservation projects are usually nothing more than a "fig leaf" to cover failure. We advocate re-focussing of conservation planning to put more emphasis on landscapes' historical ecology responsible for their bio-cultural diversity. It implies the need for new principles in policies necessary to secure the economic and cultural sovereignty of local socio-ecological systems responsible for the world's bio-cultural diversity., Competing Interests: Declarations. Conflict of interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Despite deep learning being state of the art for data-driven model predictions, its application in ecology is currently subject to two important constraints: (i) deep-learning methods are powerful in data-rich regimes, but in ecology data are typically sparse; and (ii) deep-learning models are black-box methods and inferring the processes they represent are non-trivial to elicit. Process-based (= mechanistic) models are not constrained by data sparsity or unclear processes and are thus important for building up our ecological knowledge and transfer to applications. In this work, we combine process-based models and neural networks into process-informed neural networks (PINNs), which incorporate the process knowledge directly into the neural network structure. In a systematic evaluation of spatial and temporal prediction tasks for C-fluxes in temperate forests, we show the ability of five different types of PINNs (i) to outperform process-based models and neural networks, especially in data-sparse regimes with high-transfer task and (ii) to inform on mis- or undetected processes., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Prof. Tchen-Ngo Liou is one of the founders of China's botany, geobotany, and forest ecology. Theory of dynamic geobotany, established by Prof. Liou, can track back from his doctoral work in Alps in France, and was developed based on his long-term field works in northeast, southeast, north, northeast parts of China, India, North Korea and other regions. In the short course on dynamics geobotany in 1962, he gave a series of lectures which formed a synthesized system. The key elements of this theory are the comprehensive review and critical thinking on climax theory of vegetation science and community succession. Prof. Liou has applied this theory into the establishment of artificial vegetation, the improvement of natural vegetation, forest harvesting and regeneration, and the prevent and control of desertification in China. Here, we gave a short summary about this theory, and discussed its potential influence on important topics in vegetation ecology and biodiversity science, including mountain biodiversity, natural forest conservation, forest management, global change, and vegetation classification.

For many years, the Weihe River Basin (WRB) has struggled to achieve a balance between ecological protection and economic growth. Constructing an Ecological Security Pattern (ESP) is extremely important for ensuring ecological security (ES). This study employed a coupling of multi-objective programming (MOP) and the patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model to project land use change (LUCC) in 2040 across three scenarios. Leveraging circuit theory, we generated ecological corridors and identified key ecological nodes, enabling a comparative analysis of ESPs within the WRB. The main results showed that: (1) The Ecological Protection (EP) scenario showed the highest proportions of forestland, grassland, and water, indicating an optimal ecological environment. Conversely, the Economic Development (ED) scenario features the greatest proportion of construction land, particularly evident in the rapid urban expansion. The Natural Development (ND) scenario exhibits a more balanced change, aligning closely with historical trends. (2) The ecological source areas in the EP scenario is 13,856.70 km 2 , with the largest and most intact patch area. The ecological source patches that have been identified in the ED scenario exhibit fragmentation and dispersion, encompassing a total area of 8018.82 km 2 . The ecological source areas in the ND scenario is most similar to the actual situation in 2020, encompassing 8474.99 km 2 . (3) The EP scenario demonstrates minimal landscape fragmentation. The ED scenario presents a more intricate corridor pattern, hindering species and energy flow efficiency. The ND scenario is more similar to the actual distribution in 2020. Protecting and restoring key ecological nodes, and ensuring the integrity and connectivity of ecological sources are crucial for ESP optimization in various scenarios. Combining all results, we categorize the WRB's spatial pattern into "three zones, three belts, and one center" and offer strategic suggestions for ecological preservation, promoting sustainable local ecological and socioeconomic development., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Standardizing and translating species names from different databases is key to the successful integration of data sources in biodiversity research. There are numerous taxonomic name-resolution applications that implement increasingly powerful name-cleaning and matching approaches, allowing the user to resolve species relative to multiple backbones simultaneously. Yet there remains no principled approach for combining information across these underlying taxonomic backbones, complicating efforts to combine and merge species lists with inconsistent and conflicting taxonomic information. Here, we present Treemendous, an open-source software package for the R programming environment that integrates taxonomic relationships across four publicly available backbones to improve the name resolution of tree species. By mapping relationships across the backbones, this package can be used to resolve datasets with conflicting and inconsistent taxonomic origins, while ensuring the resulting species are accepted and consistent with a single reference backbone. The user can chain together different functionalities ranging from simple matching to a single backbone, to graph-based iterative matching using synonym-accepted relations across all backbones in the database. In addition, the package allows users to 'translate' one tree species list into another, streamlining the assimilation of new data into preexisting datasets or models. The package provides a flexible workflow depending on the use case, and can either be used as a stand-alone name-resolution package or in conjunction with existing packages as a final step in the name-resolution pipeline. The Treemendous package is fast and easy to use, allowing users to quickly merge different data sources by standardizing their species names according to the regularly updated database. By combining taxonomic information across multiple backbones, the package increases matching rates and minimizes data loss, allowing for more efficient translation of tree species datasets to aid research into forest biodiversity and tree ecology., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2024 Specker et al.)

Constructing ecological security pattern and identifying ecological important areas are the focus of current research on regional ecological security. With Ningbo City as a case study area, we identified ecological sources by remote sensing ecological index, the ecological corridors and pinch point by circuit theory model, and the minimum spanning tree and cuts by graph theory algorithm. The results showed that there were 203 ecological sources in Ningbo, and that the main type of land cover was forest, including a small amount of paddy fields and flooded vegetation. There were 368 ecological corridors with a total length of 573.42 km, being dense in the southwest and sparse in the northeast. There were 91 ecological pinch points, which mainly distributed between coastal areas and closely related ecological sources. According to current situation, we put forward the optimization strategy with 187 primary corridors, 181 secondary corridors, 50 ecological restoration priority areas and 59 long-term ecological restoration areas. The optimization strategy combined with graph theory and circuit theory model would provide a refe-rence for the constructing of ecological security pattern.

Quantifying and predicting variation in gross primary productivity (GPP) is important for accurate assessment of the ecosystem carbon budget under global change. Scaling traits to community scales for predicting ecosystem functions (i.e., GPP) remain challenging, while it is promising and well appreciated with the rapid development of trait-based ecology. In this study, we aim to integrate multiple plant traits with the recently developed trait-based productivity (TBP) theory, verify it via Bayesian structural equation modeling (SEM) and complementary independent effect analysis. We further distinguish the relative importance of different traits in explaining the variation in GPP. We apply the TBP theory based on plant community traits to a multi-trait dataset containing more than 13,000 measurements of approximately 2,500 species in Chinese forest and grassland systems. Remarkably, our SEM accurately predicts variation in annual and monthly GPP across China (R 2 values of 0.87 and 0.73, respectively). Plant community traits play a key role. This study shows that integrating multiple plant functional traits into the TBP theory strengthens the quantification of ecosystem primary productivity variability and further advances understanding of the trait-productivity relationship. Our findings facilitate integration of the growing plant trait data into future ecological models., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Theoretical researches and practices on the life community of mountain-water-forest-farmland-lake-grassland-sandland mosaic and its protection and restoration have been gradually developed in China, which demands the support of a systematic disciplinary theory. Landscape ecology, as an interdisciplinary science of geography and ecology, can meet such demand thanks to its macroscopic spatial theory and technical system. Here, landscape ecology is taken as the supporting discipline of holistic protection and restoration for mountain-water-forest-farmland-lake-grassland-sandland mosaic. Firstly, we clarified that life community of mountain-water-forest-farmland-lake-grassland-sandland is a heterogeneously mosaic landscape, which bears all the characteristics of landscape and thus follows the principles of landscape ecology. Secondly, we expounded how the basic principles of landscape-ecological construction could be applied to the planning and evaluation of holistic protection and restoration for mountain-water-forest-farmland-lake-grassland-sandland mosaic. Finally, we summarized the new trend of landscape-ecological construction research, listed the theoretical and practical problems to be solved, and discussed how the projects of holistic protection and restoration for the mountain-water-forest-farmland-lake-grassland-sandland mosaic can provide a variety of practices for seeking the solutions. The combination of landscape ecology and practical restoration projects would generate effective solutions to realize sustainable development in terms of ecology, economy, and society in China and even the whole world.

During recent decades, pathogens that originated in bats have become an increasing public health concern. A major challenge is to identify how those pathogens spill over into human populations to generate a pandemic threat 1 . Many correlational studies associate spillover with changes in land use or other anthropogenic stressors 2,3 , although the mechanisms underlying the observed correlations have not been identified 4 . One limitation is the lack of spatially and temporally explicit data on multiple spillovers, and on the connections among spillovers, reservoir host ecology and behaviour and viral dynamics. We present 25 years of data on land-use change, bat behaviour and spillover of Hendra virus from Pteropodid bats to horses in subtropical Australia. These data show that bats are responding to environmental change by persistently adopting behaviours that were previously transient responses to nutritional stress. Interactions between land-use change and climate now lead to persistent bat residency in agricultural areas, where periodic food shortages drive clusters of spillovers. Pulses of winter flowering of trees in remnant forests appeared to prevent spillover. We developed integrative Bayesian network models based on these phenomena that accurately predicted the presence or absence of clusters of spillovers in each of the 25 years. Our long-term study identifies the mechanistic connections between habitat loss, climate and increased spillover risk. It provides a framework for examining causes of bat virus spillover and for developing ecological countermeasures to prevent pandemics., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Premise: Numerous processes influence plant distributions and co-occurrence patterns, including ecological sorting, limiting similarity, and stochastic effects. To discriminate among these processes and determine the spatial scales at which they operate, we investigated how functional traits and phylogenetic relatedness influence the distribution of temperate forest herbs., Methods: We surveyed understory plant communities across 257 forest stands in Wisconsin and Michigan (USA) and applied Bayesian phylogenetic linear mixed-effects models (PGLMMs) to quantify how functional traits and phylogenetic relatedness influence the environmental distribution of 139 herbaceous plant species along broad edaphic, climatic, and light gradients. These models also allowed us to test how functional and phylogenetic similarity affect species co-occurrence within microsites., Results: Leaf height, specific leaf area, and seed mass all influenced individualistic plant distributions along landscape-scale gradients in soil texture, soil fertility, light availability, and climate. In contrast, phylogenetic relationships did not consistently predict species-environment relationships. Neither functionally similar nor phylogenetically related herbs segregated among microsites within forest stands., Conclusions: Trait-mediated ecological sorting appears to drive temperate-forest community assembly, generating individualistic plant distributions along regional environmental gradients. This finding links classic studies in plant ecology and prior research in plant physiological ecology to current trait-based approaches in community ecology. However, our results fail to support the common assumption that limiting similarity governs local plant co-occurrences. Strong ecological sorting among forest stands coupled with stochastic fine-scale interactions among species appear to weaken deterministic, niche-based assembly processes at local scales., (© 2022 The Authors. American Journal of Botany published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Botanical Society of America.)

In recent years, a changing global climate and the continuous expansion of the intensity and scope of human activities have led to regional differentiation in the surface landscape. This has caused numerous ecological risks under multiple pressure sources, gradually becoming an important factor restricting the sustainable development of economic and social health. With the continuous development of the social economy, land use and associated ecological risks will inevitably change. According to the forest transformation theory and the environmental Kuznets curve, we put forward the theoretical framework of ecological risk transformation of land-use change and took Zhangjiachuan County (China) as an example to verify it. Therefore, on the basis of Landsat satellite data, this paper used landscape structures to calculate an ecological risk index, and evaluated the ecological risk of land-use changes through pattern index analyses. The results show that, from 2000 to 2020, the ecological risk index of land-use change in Zhangjiachuan County exhibited an increasing and then decreasing trend, showing an overall "inverted U-shaped" trend of change consistent with the transformation theoretical framework of ecological risks of land use change. Secondly, in terms of patterns, the ecological risk of land-use change in Zhangjiachuan County showed a distribution feature of high in the west and low in the east. In 2000, high-risk areas were mainly concentrated in the central and northern areas, while low-risk areas were mainly concentrated in the eastern areas. From 2000 to 2015, the medium-risk areas expanded to the west and midwest, and the geographic centers of the risk areas were slightly offset. From 2015 to 2020, the overall pattern of ecological risk areas was basically the same as that of the previous stage, but the medium-risk areas were slightly reduced. In terms of quantity, from 2000 to 2015, the areas of the lowest risk level and low risk level decreased, while the areas of medium risk level, high risk level, and the highest risk level increased; from 2015 to 2020, the areas of the lowest risk level and low risk level increased, and the areas of medium risk level, high risk level, and highest risk level decreased. Lastly, the spatial aggregation of ecological risks in Zhangjiachuan County weakened slightly from 2000 to 2005, gradually increased from 2005 to 2015, and then slightly weakened from 2015 to 2020.

Characterizing tree spatial patterns and interactions are helpful to reveal underlying processes assembling forest communities. Spatial networks, despite their complexity, are powerful to examine spatial interactions at an individual level using well-defined patterns. However, complex forestation networks introduce uncertainties. Validation methods are needed to assess whether network-based metrics can identify different processes. Here, we constructed three types of networks, which reflect various aspects of tree competition. Based on five spatial null models and 199 Monte-Carlo simulations, we were able to select network-based metrics that exhibited well performance in distinguishing different processes. This technique was then applied to a tropical forest dataset in Costa Rica. We found that the average node degree and the clustering coefficient are good metrics like the paired correlation function. In addition, the network approach can identify fine-scale spatial variations of tree competition and its underlying causes. Our analyzes also indicate that a bit of caution is needed when defining the network structure as well as designing network-based metrics. We suggested that validation techniques using corresponding spatial null models are critically important to reduce the negative effects caused by uncertainties of the network., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Most studies in the field of ecological restoration have only focused on repairing damaged land and have made no attempt to account for the impact of high-intensity land use on future landscape patterns. The purpose of this study was to propose a framework for evaluating the expected effects of ecological restoration based on land-use change and the ecological security pattern. Therefore, we integrated the PLUS model with the ecological security pattern and used Hefei City as a case study to conduct research. The results showed that from 2020 to 2030, land-use changes would occur primarily in the main urban area of Hefei and along the eastern shore of the Chaohu Lake watershed. Under the ecological protection scenario, arable land would be converted to construction land and woodland. Additionally, there would be an increase in ecological sources and pinch points in the area, and the number and area of the barriers would show a certain degree of reduction. The ecosystem quality, ecological integrity, and landscape connectivity of Hefei would be improved. This study offers a novel perspective for evaluating the expected effects of regional ecological restoration and provides an important reference for the dynamic formulation of multilevel ecological restoration policies.

This essay summarizes some of my findings while studying primates in the field from 1962 to 2018. Although I have studied primates throughout the tropics, I focused on Africa, primarily the Kibale Forest of Uganda. My research began in the early days of primate field studies when very little was known about the behavior and ecology of most species. Consequently, I was able to study nearly anything that could be observed under natural conditions. It was not necessary to specialize, and I opted to be a generalist. In much of my work I have attempted to understand the relationships between habitat quality, social organization, and population dynamics, emphasizing the great intraspecific variability that exists over time and between areas. Vocalizations have also long been of interest to me, starting with a description of predator-specific alarm calls and later showing how vocalizations among African monkeys appear to be evolutionarily stable. As my field experience progressed, I became increasingly involved with the conservation of tropical rain forests. In the last part of this essay I offer my thoughts on current trends in field primatology and some advice to the next generation of field biologists, stressing the importance of being a naturalist., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Japan Monkey Centre.)

Heatwaves exert disproportionately strong and sometimes irreversible impacts on forest ecosystems. These impacts remain poorly understood at the tree and species level and across large spatial scales. Here, we investigate the effects of the record-breaking 2018 European heatwave on tree growth and tree water status using a collection of high-temporal resolution dendrometer data from 21 species across 53 sites. Relative to the two preceding years, annual stem growth was not consistently reduced by the 2018 heatwave but stems experienced twice the temporary shrinkage due to depletion of water reserves. Conifer species were less capable of rehydrating overnight than broadleaves across gradients of soil and atmospheric drought, suggesting less resilience toward transient stress. In particular, Norway spruce and Scots pine experienced extensive stem dehydration. Our high-resolution dendrometer network was suitable to disentangle the effects of a severe heatwave on tree growth and desiccation at large-spatial scales in situ, and provided insights on which species may be more vulnerable to climate extremes., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Insect defoliators alter biogeochemical cycles from land into receiving waters by consuming terrestrial biomass and releasing biolabile frass. Here, we related insect outbreaks to water chemistry across 12 boreal lake catchments over 32-years. We report, on average, 27% lower dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and 112% higher dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations in lake waters when defoliators covered entire catchments and reduced leaf area. DOC reductions reached 32% when deciduous stands dominated. Within-year changes in DOC from insect outbreaks exceeded 86% of between-year trends across a larger dataset of 266 boreal and north temperate lakes from 1990 to 2016. Similarly, within-year increases in DIN from insect outbreaks exceeded local, between-year changes in DIN by 12-times, on average. As insect defoliator outbreaks occur at least every 5 years across a wider 439,661 km 2 boreal ecozone of Ontario, we suggest they are an underappreciated driver of biogeochemical cycles in forest catchments of this region., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Poverty-stricken mountainous areas are often subject to ecological vulnerability, and land use transition is a major factor affecting that vulnerability. Land use transition forms a complex network comprised of different land use types which interact with each other and respond to external environment processes, resulting in dynamics. This study develops complex network approach with cascade failure model to quantitatively explore the effects of land use transition on ecological vulnerability from the holistic and dynamic perspective. The study analyzes the characteristics of land use transition, identifying key transition types and simulating their impact on ecological vulnerability in 16 poverty-stricken mountainous counties in western Hubei Province, China, with the following findings. (1) The heterogeneity of change in agricultural land and construction land is significant; from 1990 to 2015, a short-term increase in the amount of agricultural land is followed by a gradual reduction, while the amount of construction land increased continuously. (2) Agricultural land is the dominant output land type, exported mainly to construction land and water area, and construction land is the dominant input land type, imported mainly from agricultural land. Sparse woods, woods, and dryland are the key land use types in the study area. (3) the critical points for maintaining resilience of ecosystem are 80% or higher for cultivated land and 80% or higher for woodland. (4) For the tolerance parameter α, 20% increase in cultivated land and a 10% increase in woodland would enhance ecosystem resilience and reduce its damage degree to corresponding land use transition. These findings are important points of reference for the sustainable management of poverty-stricken mountainous counties in western Hubei Province and in China more generally. They also have policy implications for land resources, especially in terms of the alleviation of poverty and the coordination between ecological protection and economic development., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Researchers and managers of natural resource conservation have increasingly emphasized the importance of maintaining a connected network of important ecological patches to mitigate landscape fragmentation, reduce the decline of biodiversity, and sustain ecological services. This research aimed to guide landscape management and decision-making by developing an evaluation framework to construct ecological security patterns. Taking the Jianghan Plain as the study area, we identified key ecological sources by overlaying the spatial patterns of ecological quality (biodiversity, carbon storage, and water yield) and ecological sensitivity (habitat sensitivity, soil erosion sensitivity, and water sensitivity) using the Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model and the Chinese Soil Loss Equation Function. Ecological corridors were obtained by the least-cost path analysis method and circuit theory. A total of 48 ecological sources (3812.95 km 2 ), primarily consisting of water area, forestland, and cropland, were identified. Ninety-one ecological corridors were derived, with a total length of 2036.28 km. Forty barriers and 40 pinch points with the highest improvement coefficient scores or priority scores were selected. There were 11 priority corridors with very high levels of connectivity improvement potential and conservation priority, occupying 16.15% of the total length of corridors. The overall potential for ecological connectivity is high on the Jianghan Plain. Our framework offers a valuable reference for constructing ecological security patterns and identifying sites for ecological restoration at the regional scale.

Ecology cannot yet fully explain why so many tree species coexist in natural communities such as tropical forests. A major difficulty is linking individual-level processes to community dynamics. We propose a combination of tree spatial data, spatial statistics and dynamical theory to reveal the relationship between spatial patterns and population-level interaction coefficients and their consequences for multispecies dynamics and coexistence. Here we show that the emerging population-level interaction coefficients have, for a broad range of circumstances, a simpler structure than their individual-level counterparts, which allows for an analytical treatment of equilibrium and stability conditions. Mechanisms such as animal seed dispersal, which result in clustering of recruits that is decoupled from parent locations, lead to a rare-species advantage and coexistence of otherwise neutral competitors. Linking spatial statistics with theories of community dynamics offers new avenues for explaining species coexistence and calls for rethinking community ecology through a spatial lens.

That functional traits should affect individual performance and, in turn, determine fitness and population growth, is a foundational assumption of trait-based ecology. This assumption is, however, not supported by a strong empirical base. Here, we measured simultaneously two individual performance metrics (survival and growth), seven traits and 10 environmental properties for each of 3981 individuals of 205 species in a 50-ha stem-mapped subtropical forest. We then modelled survival/growth as a function of traits, environments and trait × environment interactions, and quantified their relative importance at both the species and individual levels. We found evidence of alternative functional designs and multiple performance peaks along environmental gradients, indicating the presence of complicated trait × environment interactions. However, such interactions were relatively unimportant in our site, which had relatively low environmental variations. Moreover, individual performance was not better predicted, and trait × environment interactions were not more likely detected, at the individual level than at the species level. Although the trait × environment interactions might be safely ignored in relatively homogeneous environments, we encourage future studies to test the interactive effects of traits and environments on individual performances and lifelong fitness at larger spatial scales or along experimentally manipulated environmental gradients., (© 2020 The Authors New Phytologist © 2020 New Phytologist Foundation.)

Tropical forests are being deforested worldwide, and the remaining fragments are suffering from biomass and biodiversity erosion. Quantifying this erosion is challenging because ground data on tropical biodiversity and biomass are often sparse. Here, we use an unprecedented dataset of 1819 field surveys covering the entire Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot. We show that 83-85% of the surveys presented losses in forest biomass and tree species richness, functional traits, and conservation value. On average, forest fragments have 25-32% less biomass, 23-31% fewer species, and 33, 36, and 42% fewer individuals of late-successional, large-seeded, and endemic species, respectively. Biodiversity and biomass erosion are lower inside strictly protected conservation units, particularly in large ones. We estimate that biomass erosion across the Atlantic Forest remnants is equivalent to the loss of 55-70 thousand km 2 of forests or US$2.3-2.6 billion in carbon credits. These figures have direct implications on mechanisms of climate change mitigation.

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality rates vary greatly Amazon-wide, on average trees are as likely to die standing as they are broken or uprooted-modes of death with different ecological consequences. Species-level growth rate is the single most important predictor of tree death in Amazonia, with faster-growing species being at higher risk. Within species, however, the slowest-growing trees are at greatest risk while the effect of tree size varies across the basin. In the driest Amazonian region species-level bioclimatic distributional patterns also predict the risk of death, suggesting that these forests are experiencing climatic conditions beyond their adaptative limits. These results provide not only a holistic pan-Amazonian picture of tree death but large-scale evidence for the overarching importance of the growth-survival trade-off in driving tropical tree mortality.

This article provides an overview of books published on Brazilian environmental history. Among the large variety of environmental themes seen in Brazilian historiography, we selected the authors who in some way identify themselves as explicitly related to the academic environmental history community. Although the emphasis was on authored books, we sought to at least mention the principal edited books produced in the field. With this mapping, we demonstrate the themes and spatial-temporal foci prioritized by environmental historians in their studies on Brazil. Additionally, we sought to show how the gaps still existing in the literature provide promising paths for future expansion of this field.

Past human societies have left persistent marks on forests worldwide. However, the degree to which pre-colonial Amerindian societies have affected forest structure is still not fully understood, especially in southern Brazil. This study investigated the influence of two distinct Amerindian groups (Southern-Jê and Guarani) over tree composition of forest fragments in the State of Santa Catarina. Vegetation data was obtained from the Santa Catarina Forest and Floristic Inventory (SCFFI): a statewide systematic vegetation sampling project. Archaeological data was collated from literature reviews as well as existing databases for archaeological sites occupied by Guarani and Southern-Jê groups. Using these sites of known Amerindian occupation, and corresponding environmental variables, ecological niche models were developed for each Amerindian group, predicting potential archaeological sites occupied by these groups across southern Brazil. Maps of these potential occupation sites of pre-colonial Amerindian groups were compared with 417 corresponding floristic inventory plots. Redundancy analysis (RDA) was used to identify floristic composition patterns linked to areas with a high probability of Southern-Jê or Guarani presence. Southern-Jê and Guarani pre-colonial occupations overlapped near main rivers; however, Southern-Jê groups generally occupied elevated areas whereas Guarani occupied mostly coastal areas. We observed differences in forest composition associated with the predicted occurrence of these pre-colonial Amerindian groups. Based on these results, we argue there is a relationship between tree species distribution and pre-colonial human occupation by these two Amerindian groups., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

We provide field monitoring data of a territorial raptor (the booted eagle, Hieraaetus pennatus), that was intensively monitored over a period of 18 years (1998-2015) in a Mediterranean forested area of south-eastern Spain designated as a Special Protection Area (Natura 2000 Network) for this species. The data set compiles all the relevant information about the occupation of territories and nests, reproductive ecology, long-term monitoring of marked individuals and influence of parent's colour morph on brood size. Several questions concerning the population ecology of forest-dwelling raptors and factors conditioning territorial occupancy, such as location cues or site fidelity, are addressed. This type of long-term population monitoring has high potential for replication, reuse and comparison purposes, providing insights for monitoring other long-lived, territorial species.

Worldwide, bees are the most important group of animal pollinators. The ecosystem service they provide is vital in natural areas and croplands, and the taxonomic and functional diversity associated with bees is vital in understanding ecosystem functioning ensuring biodiversity conservation, food security and human livelihoods. A dataset of bees from mountainous areas of Carajás National Forest (eastern Amazon) and Nova Lima (Atlantic Forest) is presented here. It is a compilation of sampling efforts from 1983 to 2018 through the accession of data stored in museum collections. In total, 222 and 144 bee species were recorded in Carajás and Nova Lima, respectively. This represents the most robust dataset of Brazilian bees including species traits (body size, flight range, distribution, crop pollination, sociality and nesting) of 328 species. This dataset contributes to advances in the knowledge of the functional trait ecology of wild bees and can benefit further studies that analyze the response of wild bees to land use and climate changes, and its effects on the provision of crop pollination services.

This study put forward an evaluation index system for measuring forest ecological security index (FESI). Taking the 1086 counties located in the Yangtze River Economic Belt as a case study, we investigated the change and its spatial pattern of FESI, as well as the determining indicators (both natural and socio-economic), with the support of Arcmap and GeoDA software. The average FESI value of the study counties in 2010 and 2015 was found to be 0.4226 and 0.4990, increased by 18.08%. Spatially, an evident spatial gradient change was identified, with FESI values in the upstream areas of the Yangtze River being higher than those in midstream areas, and the values of midstream areas in turn being higher than those in downstream areas. The eight tributary basins within the economic belt witnessed significantly different FESI values. Based on the results of this evaluation of FESI and its sub-evaluation indexes, we identified 46.04% of the total counties as constituting "problem areas". These problem areas were mainly concentrated in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, followed by counties around Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake and in Sichuan province. A regression analysis was conducted in order to identify the determining indicators behind forest ecological security, with results indicating that the ratio of secondary industry, the urbanization rate, the per capita financial institution loan balance, accumulated temperature and wind speed all negatively impacted on FESI values, while population structure, soil organic matter and rainfall were revealed to play a positive role; all of these indicators were highly significant. Given these findings, we also set out a series of policy measures intended to promote the sustainable forest development of the study region. These include the vigorous development of tertiary industry and moves to reduce the proportion of the secondary industry in the national economy, the development of a circular economy, slowing the pace of urbanization, and continued increases in forestry investment in central cities - particularly in problem areas., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The Bashang Plateau, which is an ecologically fragile agro-pastoral zone in Hebei Province in China, plays an important role in protecting the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region from wind and sand erosion. Over the last four decades, it has been the target of extensive afforestation campaigns to promote improved ecosystem services. Though the benefits and costs of afforestation and its effectiveness within forestry have been widely investigated, few studies have focused on local households' willingness to accept (WTA) compensation relating to afforestation policies. Moreover, despite their importance in ensuring effective afforestation policies, the factors influencing WTA values have seldom been examined. We administered a direct questionnaire survey of households on the Bashang Plateau and applied a contingent valuation analysis to estimate their WTA values for compensation associated with ecological protection policies. We obtained 249 valid questionnaires, evidencing a high response rate (92.22%). New indicators of factors influencing respondents' WTA has been conducted including social, economic and ecological aspects, especially the improvement of ecological factors which consists of respondents' perceptions regarding the importance of ES and their satisfaction levels, and other environmental awareness factors. Additionally, in the case where many studies performed only one single regression analysis, this study performed a two-stage regression analysis and compared the results with those obtained using the Tobit model. A reasonable compensation standard facilitates a positive relationship between economic development and protection of natural environments. The findings showed that a certain amount of compensation (approximately 477.91 CNY/mu/year) was likely to prompt households' participation in afforestation projects. Compared with compensation standards for other ecological projects, the reported standard for afforestation projects on the Bashang Plateau is low, indicating that there is room for improvement. High annual household incomes are a key factor influencing households' WTA regarding their participation in afforestation activities. The results also revealed households' environmental awareness. Among respondents who participated in afforestation, those who valued forests for protecting environments and improving ecosystem services opted for lower compensation amounts. Our findings contribute valuable inputs for formulating ecological compensation standards and can serve as a reference for analyses of WTA and factors that drive it in other similar economically backward and ecologically fragile regions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

With China's sustained economic development and constant increase in national income, Chinese nationals' tourism consumption rate increases. As a major Chinese economic development engine, the domestic tourism industry has entered a transition period operation pattern featured by diversified products. Among them, as a new hot spot of the tourism industry in China, ecological tourism has enjoyed rapid development, with great potential. Thus, the ecological value evaluation of forest ecological tourism demonstration areas is very important to the domestic tourism industry. In this paper, we propose some Dombi Heronian mean operators with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (IVIFNs). Then, two MADM (multiple attribute decision making) methods are proposed based on IVIFWDHM (interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy weighted Dombi Heronian mean) and IVIFWDGHM (interval-valued intuitionistic weighted Dombi geometric Heronian mean) operators. Finally, we gave an experimental case for evaluating the ecological value of forest ecological tourism demonstration area to show the proposed decision methods., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Forests play a major role in the global carbon cycle. Previous studies on the capacity of forests to sequester atmospheric CO 2 have mostly focused on carbon uptake, but the roles of carbon turnover time and its spatiotemporal changes remain poorly understood. Here, we used long-term inventory data (1955 to 2018) from 695 mature forest plots to quantify temporal trends in living vegetation carbon turnover time across tropical, temperate, and cold climate zones, and compared plot data to 8 Earth system models (ESMs). Long-term plots consistently showed decreases in living vegetation carbon turnover time, likely driven by increased tree mortality across all major climate zones. Changes in living vegetation carbon turnover time were negatively correlated with CO 2 enrichment in both forest plot data and ESM simulations. However, plot-based correlations between living vegetation carbon turnover time and climate drivers such as precipitation and temperature diverged from those of ESM simulations. Our analyses suggest that forest carbon sinks are likely to be constrained by a decrease in living vegetation carbon turnover time, and accurate projections of forest carbon sink dynamics will require an improved representation of tree mortality processes and their sensitivity to climate in ESMs., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

In an era of rapid climate change, and with it concern over insect declines, we used two theories to predict 20-yr changes in 34 North American ant communities. The ecosystems, from deserts to hardwood forests, were first surveyed in the 1990s. When resurveyed in 2016-2017, they averaged 1°C warmer with 200 g C·m -2 ·yr -1 higher plant productivity. Ant colony abundance changed from -49% to +61%. Consistent with Thermal Performance Theory, colony abundance increased with temperature increases < 1°C, then decreased as a site's mean monthly temperature change increased up to +2.4°C. Consistent with Species Energy Theory, (1) ant abundance tracked changes in a measure of energy availability (net aboveground productivity, g C·m -2 ·yr -1 ) and (2) increases in colony abundance drove increases in local plot- and transect-level species richness but not that of Chao 2, an estimate of the size of the species pool. Even after accounting for these drivers, local species richness was still higher ~20 yr after the original surveys, likely due to the increased activity of ant workers. These results suggest community changes are predictable using theory from geographical ecology, and that warming can first enhance but may ultimately decrease the abundance of this important insect taxon., (© 2019 by the Ecological Society of America.)

Human movement into insect vector and wildlife reservoir habitats determines zoonotic disease risks; however, few data are available to quantify the impact of land use on pathogen transmission. Here, we utilise GPS tracking devices and novel applications of ecological methods to develop fine-scale models of human space use relative to land cover to assess exposure to the zoonotic malaria Plasmodium knowlesi in Malaysian Borneo. Combining data with spatially explicit models of mosquito biting rates, we demonstrate the role of individual heterogeneities in local space use in disease exposure. At a community level, our data indicate that areas close to both secondary forest and houses have the highest probability of human P. knowlesi exposure, providing quantitative evidence for the importance of ecotones. Despite higher biting rates in forests, incorporating human movement and space use into exposure estimates illustrates the importance of intensified interactions between pathogens, insect vectors and people around habitat edges., Competing Interests: KF, NA, TA, PB, TC, IV, HF, BM, MW, SN, JC, CD No competing interests declared, (© 2019, Fornace et al.)

China's Loess Plateau region has a weak ecological environment, and the government has invested a considerable amount of money to repair the ecological environment. Vegetation plays an important role in the ecological environment. The Sen slope analysis and the Mann-Kendall trend test were used to analyze the trend and significance of vegetation coverage from 2000 to 2015. The vegetation coverage was analyzed to investigate the influence of land use types and conversion. The Pearson Correlation Test and qualitative analysis were utilized at the pixel and regional scales to investigate the influence of meteorological factors and topographical factors. The fluctuation of vegetation in Shaanxi was analyzed from 2000 to 2015. The impact of anthropogenic activities was investigated using residual trend analysis. Hurst exponent and H/S analysis were applied to investigate the potential future vegetation coverage trend. The vegetation coverage in Shaanxi Province improved from 2000 to 2015. In unchanged land use types, all types showed significant improvements expect for other construction land. In changed land use types, most of the land use types converted into urban land showed degradation. All the land use types converted into dry land, forest, and unused land showed improvements. Ecological protection has achieved great results. Precipitation and temperature partly affect vegetation coverage in Shaanxi. Gradients and elevation affected the distribution of vegetation coverage and human activities influenced land use type and the ecological environment. In the future, potential degradation risks still exist in the parts of Shaanxi Province.

A major challenge of eco-epidemiology is to determine which factors promote the transmission of infectious diseases and to establish risk maps that can be used by public health authorities. The geographic predictions resulting from ecological niche modelling have been widely used for modelling the future dispersion of vectors based on the occurrence records and the potential prevalence of the disease. The establishment of risk maps for disease systems with complex cycles such as cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) can be very challenging due to the many inference networks between large sets of host and vector species, with considerable heterogeneity in disease patterns in space and time. One novelty in the present study is the use of human CL cases to predict the risk of leishmaniasis occurrence in response to anthropogenic, climatic and environmental factors at two different scales, in the Neotropical moist forest biome (Amazonian basin and surrounding forest ecosystems) and in the surrounding region of French Guiana. With a consistent data set never used before and a conceptual and methodological framework for interpreting data cases, we obtained risk maps with high statistical support. The predominantly identified human CL risk areas are those where the human impact on the environment is significant, associated with less contributory climatic and ecological factors. For both models this study highlights the importance of considering the anthropogenic drivers for disease risk assessment in human, although CL is mainly linked to the sylvatic and peri-urban cycle in Meso and South America., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Biodiversity patterns emerge as a consequence of evolutionary and ecological processes. Their relative importance is frequently tested on model ecosystems such as oceanic islands that vary in both. However, the coarse-scale data typically used in biogeographic studies have limited inferential power to separate the effects of historical biogeographic factors (e.g., island age) from the effects of ecological ones (e.g., island area and habitat heterogeneity). Here, we describe local-scale biodiversity patterns of woody plants using a database of more than 500 forest plots from across the Hawaiian archipelago, where these volcanic islands differ in age by several million years. We show that, after controlling for factors such as island area and heterogeneity, the oldest islands (Kaua'i and O'ahu) have greater native species diversity per unit area than younger islands (Maui and Hawai'i), indicating an important role for macroevolutionary processes in driving not just whole-island differences in species diversity, but also local community assembly. Further, we find that older islands have a greater number of rare species that are more spatially clumped (i.e., higher within-island β-diversity) than younger islands. When we included alien species in our analyses, we found that the signal of macroevolutionary processes via island age was diluted. Our approach allows a more explicit test of the question of how macroevolutionary factors shape not just regional-scale biodiversity, but also local-scale community assembly patterns and processes in a model archipelago ecosystem, and it can be applied to disentangle biodiversity drivers in other systems., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

The ecological environment protection and utilization of forestland scenic spot is fundamental for the development of scenic spot tourism. In this study, an ecological sensitivity evaluation index system was established based on environmental factors and protection needs. The combined weights were obtained by using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy weight methods. The ecological sensitivity of the Qingyun Mountain scenic spot in Benxi was evaluated by GIS technique, and the spatial planning of the scenic spot was formulated. The results showed that the high-sensitive, sensitive, low-sensitive and non-sensitive areas accounted for 9.2%, 60.2%, 22.7% and 7.9% of the total area of Qingyun Mountain scenic spot, respectively. According to the ecological characteristics and ecological protection red line of Qingyun Mountain, the scenic area could be divided into three parts, including restricted development zone, moderate development zone, and tourism development zone. Combined with the spatial distribution of natural and cultural resources, the spatial planning of "two axis and six areas" in the scenic spot was formulated. In view of the resource utilization status and existing problems in each zone, we proposed corresponding tourism development planning strategies. Our results could provide a more scientific and effective planning path for the spatial planning of forestland scenic spots.

An effective strategy to resolve conservation conflicts on lands outside of nature reserves is to consider the spatial arrangement of agricultural and native vegetation parcels such that the ecological value of the landscape is improved without reducing the amount of land used for agricultural production. Global optimization methods have been used to identify the best spatial arrangement of land parcels for a given project goal, but these methods are not designed to provide pathways to reach the optimum from the initial landscape. Here we describe how local search algorithms can be used to develop land parcel rearrangement pathways to obtain a landscape that sustains greater species richness than the initial landscape without changing the amount of land used for agricultural production. To demonstrate how the local optimization framework can be applied, an ecological setting based on a forest-grassland mosaic ecosystem in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil was constructed. Plant samples collected from this region were used to construct species area curves. Multiple locally optimal solutions that improved the modeled species richness of the landscape almost to globally optimal levels were identified. To support the results, the algorithm was also applied to a 306,250 ha forest-grassland region of Rio Grande do Sul. The case study results suggested that conservation polices solely based on landowners satisfying a legal reserve percentage on their property should be revised to consider landscape-level connectivity. Providing multiple possible solutions for landscape configurations using local optimization methods may improve managerial flexibility for decision-makers, compared to global optimization approaches providing a single solution. Furthermore, the algorithm details the parcel exchange pathways that are required to reach the optimal land state. We conclude that local and global optimization approaches can be used in combination to improve land use decision-making for conservation, in mosaic ecosystems as well as other terrestrial ecosystems., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

We synthesized the scientific research carried out in Changbai Mountain from 1956 to 2018 by mapping knowledge domains and bibliometrics based on the literature from international database (WOS) and domestic databases (CNKI and CSCD). The results showed that natural science research in Changbai Mountain underwent three stages during 1956-2018, including embryo stage, growing stage, and rapid development stage. The natural research in Changbai Mountain could be divided into five fields, i.e., forest and ecological science, volcano and geology science, environmental change science, resource sciences and utilization, animal and microbial science, with a total of 20 main research directions. Since 2000, forest and ecological science, volcano and geological science, environmental change science dominated the natural science research in Changbai Mountain. The researches in recent 20 years mainly concentrated on the following seven disciplines: community ecology, forest management, soil ecology, ecosystem ecology, eco-climatology, forest responses to environmental change, and volcanic geology. International researches showed a trend of strong integration of different disciplines. We forecast that the natural science research in the Changbai Mountain would deepen its research in the next decade. Moreover, other fields such as old-growth forest and large-scale ecosystem carbon processes, forest-altitude-climate change, soil fauna and microorganisms, forest management and human activities, biodiversity, volcanic origin and eruption history, volcanic eruption dynamics and volcanic monitoring will emerge as the new research focus. Scale polarization, elements diversification, discipline crossing, and research deepening would be the future trend of natural science research in Changbai Mountain.

Biological invasions are occurring worldwide, causing enormous economic and ecological damage. Early detection and prediction of invasiveness are the most effective measures to reduce its damage. The Alexandra palm (Archontophoenix alexandrae) is a prolific seeder and an alien species widely planted in tropical China. To help understand the invasion risks posed by this species, lab and field experiments on seed germination were conducted. Results show that the seeds only germinate within a temperature range of 20-30 °C and are sensitive to desiccation and high temperature, with seedling inhibition at 35 °C and -0.8 MPa. Complete viability loss was observed after desiccation to water content of 0.17-0.21 g/g or heat treatment for 30 minutes at 60 °C and above. However, appropriate habitats such as the rainforest understory, forest gaps, forest edges, and a rubber plantation are present in Xishuangbanna. Seeds are also frequently consumed by animals; therefore, there is a high potential for Alexandra palm to become an invasive species in Xishuangbanna. Currently, the main barrier to invasion in Xishuangbanna is likely to be the need for seed dispersal into suitable moist, partly shaded, habitats. Understanding the requirements for germination of the Alexandra palm can better inform management strategies for the control of this species.

Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) designs are powerful tools to derive inferences about environmental perturbations (e.g., hurricanes, restoration programs) when controlled experimental designs are unfeasible. Applications of BACI designs mostly rely on testing for a significant interaction between periods and treatments (so-called BACI contrast) to demonstrate the effects of the perturbation. However, significant interactions can emerge for several reasons, including when changes are larger in control sites, such that additional diagnostics must be performed to determine the full complexity of system changes. We propose two measures that detail the nature of change implied by BACI contrasts, along with its uncertainty. CI-divergence (Control-Impact divergence) quantifies to what extent control and impact sites have diverged between the after and the before period, whereas CI-contribution (Control-Impact contribution) quantifies to what extent the change between periods is stronger in impact sites relative to control sites. To illustrate how these two CI measures can be combined with BACI contrast to gain insights about effects of environmental perturbations, we used count data from the Swedish Breeding Bird Survey to investigate how hurricane Gudrun affected the long-term abundances of four bird species in forested areas of southern Sweden. Before-After-Control-Impact contrasts suggested the hurricane affected all four species. However, the values of the two CI measures strongly differed, even among species showing similar BACI contrasts. Those differences highlight qualitatively distinct population trajectories between periods and treatments requiring different ecological explanations. Overall, we show that BACI contrasts do not provide the full story in assessing the effects of environmental perturbations. The two CI measures can be used to assist ecological interpretations, or to specify detailed hypotheses about effects of restoration actions to allow stronger confirmatory inference about their outcomes. By providing a framework to develop more detailed explanations and hypotheses about ecological changes, the two CI measures can improve conclusions and strengthen evidence of effects of conservation actions and impact assessments under BACI designs., (© 2018 by the Ecological Society of America.)

Spatial patterns of soil heavy metal potential ecological risk are important for the scientific pollution management of bamboo forests. A total of 160 soil samples were collected from typical moso bamboo forests in the southeastern region of China. Ecological risk index and GIS-based kriging methodologies were applied to analyze spatial variations of analyzed metals and were compared to background levels in samples collected from Zhejiang Province. The results show that the exceeded background rate of the single-factor pollution index of Pb, Cd and Cu in all soil samples is greater than 50%, with the highest overbackground rate of Pb being 99.38%. The potential ecological risk of Hg, Pb and Cd reaches a stronger risk level, while other heavy metals such as As, Cu and Cr are associated with a slight risk level. Different spatial patterns across the whole study area indicate that the potential ecological risk in the northwest and southeast areas is high, but is relatively low in the north-central area.

Cocoa agroforestry systems have the potential to conserve biodiversity and provide environmental or ecological benefits at various nested scales ranging from the plot to ecoregion. While integrating organic practices into cocoa agroforestry may further enhance these potentials, empirical and robust data to support this claim is lacking, and mechanisms for biodiversity conservation and the provision of environmental and ecological benefits are poorly understood. A field study was conducted in the Eastern Region of Ghana to evaluate the potential of organic cocoa agroforests to conserve native floristic diversity in comparison with conventional cocoa agroforests. Shade tree species richness, Shannon, Simpson's reciprocal and Margalef diversity indices were estimated from 84 organic and conventional cocoa agroforestry plots. Species importance value index, a measure of how dominant a species is in a given ecosystem, and conservation status were used to evaluate the conservation potential of shade trees on studied cocoa farms. Organic farms recorded higher mean shade tree species richness (5.10 ± 0.38) compared to conventional farms (3.48 ± 0.39). Similarly, mean Shannon diversity index, Simpson's reciprocal diversity index and Margalef diversity index were significantly higher on organic farms compared to conventional farms. According to the importance value index, fruit and native shade tree species were the most important on both organic and conventional farms for all the cocoa age groups but more so on organic farms. Organic farms maintained 14 native tree species facing a conservation issue compared to 10 on conventional cocoa farms. The results suggest that diversified organic cocoa farms can serve as reservoirs of native tree species, including those currently facing conservation concerns thereby providing support and contributing to the conservation of tree species in the landscape., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Understanding how biodiversity is distributed across space and time is one of the main challenges of biological conservation. Moreover, the choice of an adequate sampling methodology is crucial since this must provide an efficient overview of species diversity. We assessed the effectiveness and complementarity of three sampling methods (hand collection [HC], pitfall trapping [PT], and light trapping [LT]) for collecting ground beetles, which are known as a robust ecological indicator sensitive to habitat modifications. Our results varied in the number of species and abundance thereof caught by each sampling method. Both HC and LT were the most efficient and showed the highest species complementarity. HC recorded the highest number of ground beetle individuals, whereas the largest number of species were recorded with LT, but most represented by few individuals. Furthermore, the results revealed that PT do not work efficiently to provide reliable inventories in the remnant riparian cloud forests, which are characterized to be a highly heterogeneous environment. Our results might provide guidelines to choose the most efficient standardized sampling protocol for future inventory and monitoring of ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) diversity as a tool for the conservation planning in this threatened ecosystem.