Terrestrial mammals are a key component of tropical forest communities as indicators of ecosystem health and providers of important ecosystem services. However, there is little quantitative information about how they change with local, regional and global threats. In this paper, the first standardized pantropical forest terrestrial mammal community study, we examine several aspects of terrestrial mammal species and community diversity (species richness, species diversity, evenness, dominance, functional diversity and community structure) at seven sites around the globe using a single standardized camera trapping methodology approach. The sites-located in Uganda, Tanzania, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Suriname, Brazil and Costa Rica-are surrounded by different landscape configurations, from continuous forests to highly fragmented forests. We obtained more than 51 000 images and detected 105 species of mammals with a total sampling effort of 12 687 camera trap days. We find that mammal communities from highly fragmented sites have lower species richness, species diversity, functional diversity and higher dominance when compared with sites in partially fragmented and continuous forest. We emphasize the importance of standardized camera trapping approaches for obtaining baselines for monitoring forest mammal communities so as to adequately understand the effect of global, regional and local threats and appropriately inform conservation actions.

The high species richness of tropical forests has long been recognized, yet there remains substantial uncertainty regarding the actual number of tropical tree species. Using a pantropical tree inventory database from closed canopy forests, consisting of 657,630 trees belonging to 11,371 species, we use a fitted value of Fisher's alpha and an approximate pantropical stem total to estimate the minimum number of tropical forest tree species to fall between ∼ 40,000 and ∼ 53,000, i.e., at the high end of previous estimates. Contrary to common assumption, the Indo-Pacific region was found to be as species-rich as the Neotropics, with both regions having a minimum of ∼ 19,000-25,000 tree species. Continental Africa is relatively depauperate with a minimum of ∼ 4,500-6,000 tree species. Very few species are shared among the African, American, and the Indo-Pacific regions. We provide a methodological framework for estimating species richness in trees that may help refine species richness estimates of tree-dependent taxa.

1. Camera traps deployed in grids or stratified random designs are a well-established survey tool for wildlife but there has been little evaluation of study design parameters.2. We used an empirical subsampling approach involving 2,225 camera deployments run at 41 study areas around the world to evaluate three aspects of camera trap study design (number of sites, duration and season of sampling) and their influence on the estimation of three ecological metrics (species richness, occupancy and detection rate) for mammals.3. We found that 25-35 camera sites were needed for precise estimates of species richness, depending on scale of the study. The precision of species-level estimates of occupancy (ψ) was highly sensitive to occupancy level, with <20 camera sites needed for precise estimates of common (ψ > 0.75) species, but more than 150 camera sites likely needed for rare (ψ < 0.25) species. Species detection rates were more difficult to estimate precisely at the grid level due to spatial heterogeneity, | 701Methods in Ecology and Evoluঞon KAYS et Al.

Extinction rates in the Anthropocene are three orders of magnitude higher than background and disproportionately occur in the tropics, home of half the world’s species. Despite global efforts to combat tropical species extinctions, lack of high-quality, objective information on tropical biodiversity has hampered quantitative evaluation of conservation strategies. In particular, the scarcity of population-level monitoring in tropical forests has stymied assessment of biodiversity outcomes, such as the status and trends of animal populations in protected areas. Here, we evaluate occupancy trends for 511 populations of terrestrial mammals and birds, representing 244 species from 15 tropical forest protected areas on three continents. For the first time to our knowledge, we use annual surveys from tropical forests worldwide that employ a standardized camera trapping protocol, and we compute data analytics that correct for imperfect detection. We found that occupancy declined in 22%, increased in 17%, and exhibited no change in 22% of populations during the last 3–8 years, while 39% of populations were detected too infrequently to assess occupancy changes. Despite extensive variability in occupancy trends, these 15 tropical protected areas have not exhibited systematic declines in biodiversity (i.e., occupancy, richness, or evenness) at the community level. Our results differ from reports of widespread biodiversity declines based on aggregated secondary data and expert opinion and suggest less extreme deterioration in tropical forest protected areas. We simultaneously fill an important conservation data gap and demonstrate the value of large-scale monitoring infrastructure and powerful analytics, which can be scaled to incorporate additional sites, ecosystems, and monitoring methods. In an era of catastrophic biodiversity loss, robust indicators produced from standardized monitoring infrastructure are critical to accurately assess population outcomes and identify conservation strategies that can avert biodiversity collapse.

Carnivores have long been used as model organisms to examine mechanisms that allow coexistence among ecologically similar species. Interactions between carnivores, including competition and predation, comprise important processes regulating local community structure and diversity. We use data from an intensive camera-trapping monitoring program across eight Neotropical forest sites to describe the patterns of spatiotemporal organization of a guild of five sympatric cat species: jaguar (Panthera onca), puma (Puma concolor), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) and margay (Leopardus wiedii). For the three largest cat species, we developed multi-stage occupancy models accounting for habitat characteristics (landscape complexity and prey availability) and models accounting for species interactions (occupancy estimates of potential competitor cat species). Patterns of habitat-use were best explained by prey availability, rather than habitat structure or species interactions, with no evidence of negative associations of jaguar on puma and ocelot occupancy or puma on ocelot occupancy. We further explore temporal activity patterns and overlap of all five felid species. We observed a moderate temporal overlap between jaguar, puma and ocelot, with differences in their activity peaks, whereas higher temporal partitioning was observed between jaguarundi and both ocelot and margay. Lastly, we conducted temporal overlap analysis and calculated species activity levels across study sites to explore if shifts in daily activity within species can be explained by varying levels of local competition pressure. Activity patterns of ocelots, jaguarundis and margays were similarly bimodal across sites, but pumas exhibited irregular activity patterns, most likely as a response to jaguar activity. Activity levels were similar among sites and observed differences were unrelated to competition or intraguild killing risk. Our study reveals apparent spatial and temporal partitioning for most of the species pairs analyzed, with prey abundance being more important than species interactions in governing the local occurrence and spatial distribution of Neotropical forest felids.

Plinio Sist 10,88 | Bonaventure Sonke 60 | J. Daniel Soto 21 | Cintia Rodrigues de Souza 24 | Juliana Stropp 89 | Martin J. P. Sullivan 35 | Ben Swanepoel 34 | Hans ter Steege 25,90 | John Terborgh 91,92 | Nicolas Texier 93 | Takeshi Toma 94 | Renato Valencia 95 | Luis Valenzuela 75 | Leandro Valle Ferreira 96 | Fernando Cornejo Valverde 97 | Tinde R. Van Andel 25 | Rodolfo Vasque 77 | Hans Verbeeck 61 | Pandi Vivek 22 | Abstract Aim:Large tropical trees form the interface between ground and airborne observations, offering a unique opportunity to capture forest properties remotely and to investigate their variations on broad scales. However, despite rapid development of metrics to characterize the forest canopy from remotely sensed data, a gap remains between aerial and field inventories. To close this gap, we propose a new pan-tropical model to predict plot-level forest structure properties and biomass from only the largest trees.Location: Pan-tropical.Time period: Early 21st century. Major taxa studied: Woody plants.Methods: Using a dataset of 867 plots distributed among 118 sites across the tropics, we tested the prediction of the quadratic mean diameter, basal area, Lorey's height, community wood density and aboveground biomass (AGB) from the ith largest trees. Results:Measuring the largest trees in tropical forests enables unbiased predictions of plot-and site-level forest structure. The 20 largest trees per hectare predicted quadratic mean diameter, basal area, Lorey's height, community wood density and AGB with 12, 16, 4, 4 and 17.7% of relative error, respectively. Most of the remaining error in biomass prediction is driven by differences in the proportion of total biomass held in medium-sized trees (50-70 cm diameter at breast height), which shows some continental dependency, with American tropical forests presenting the highest proportion of total biomass in these intermediate-diameter classes relative to other continents. Main conclusions:Our approach provides new information on tropical forest structure and can be used to generate accurate field estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks to support the calibration and validation of current and forthcoming space missions. It will reduce the cost of field inventories and contribute to scientific understanding of tropical forest ecosystems and response to climate change. K E Y W O R D Scarbon, climate change, forest structure, large trees, pan-tropical, REDD+, tropical forest ecology

Aim To examine variation in the phylogenetic diversity (PD) of tree communities across geographical and environmental gradients in Amazonia.Location Two hundred and eighty-three c. 1 ha forest inventory plots from across Amazonia.Methods We evaluated PD as the total phylogenetic branch length across species in each plot (PDss), the mean pairwise phylogenetic distance between species (MPD), the mean nearest taxon distance (MNTD) and their equivalents standardized for species richness (ses.PDss, ses.MPD, ses.MNTD). We compared PD of tree communities growing (1) on substrates of varying geological age; and (2) in environments with varying ecophysiological barriers to growth and survival.Results PDss is strongly positively correlated with species richness (SR), whereas MNTD has a negative correlation. Communities on geologically young-and intermediate-aged substrates (western and central Amazonia respectively) have the highest SR, and therefore the highest PDss and the lowest MNTD. We find that the youngest and oldest substrates (the latter on the Brazilian and Guiana Shields) have the highest ses.PDss and ses.MNTD. MPD and ses.MPD are strongly correlated with how evenly taxa are distributed among the three principal angiosperm clades and are both highest in western Amazonia. Meanwhile, seasonally dry tropical forest (SDTF) and forests on white sands have low PD, as evaluated by any metric.

SignificanceIdentifying and explaining regional differences in tropical forest dynamics, structure, diversity, and composition are critical for anticipating region-specific responses to global environmental change. Floristic classifications are of fundamental importance for these efforts. Here we provide a global tropical forest classification that is explicitly based on community evolutionary similarity, resulting in identification of five major tropical forest regions and their relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. African and American forests are grouped, reflecting their former western Gondwanan connection, while Indo-Pacific forests range from eastern Africa and Madagascar to Australia and the Pacific. The connection between northern-hemisphere Asian and American forests is confirmed, while Dry forests are identified as a single tropical biome.