Contrasting the distribution of butterflies and termites in plantations and tropical forests

Basset, Yves; Barrios, Héctor; Ramirez, José Alejandro; Lopez, Yacksecari; Coronado-Rivera, James; Perez, Filonila; Arizala, Stephany; Bobadilla, Ricardo; Leponce, Maurice

doi:10.1007/s10531-016-1231-6

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…[54] and Panama: Basset et al . [55]) supporting the hypothesis that it is a global pattern. Generally, the effect is more prominent in tropical forest regions than in savannahs.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 65%

A comparison of termite assemblages from West African savannah and forest ecosystems using morphological and molecular markers

2019

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Termites (Isoptera) are important ecosystem engineers of tropical ecosystems. However, they are notoriously difficult to identify, which hinders ecological research. To overcome these problems, we comparatively studied termite assemblages in the two major West African ecosystems, savannah and forest, both under natural settings and along disturbance gradients. We identified all species using morphological as well as molecular markers. We hypothesized species richness to be higher in the forest than the savannah and that it declines with disturbance in both ecosystems. Overall we found more species in the forest than in the savannah. However, alpha diversity per site did not differ between both ecosystems with on average around ten species. For both ecosystems, species diversity did not decrease along the studied disturbance gradient but encounter rates did. For the forest, we did not detect a decline in soil feeding termites and an increase of fungus grower Macrotermitinae with disturbance as some other studies did. Yet, soil feeders were generally rare. Strikingly, the set of morphologically difficult-to-identify Macrotermitinae ( Microtermes and Ancistrotermes ) was as high in the forest as in the savannah with little species overlap between both ecosystems. Using phylogenetic community analyses, we found little evidence for strong structuring mechanisms such as environmental filtering or interspecific competition. Most local assemblages did not differ significantly from random assemblages of the regional species pool. Our study is the most comprehensive of its kind. It provides the most reliable termite species list for West Africa that builds the basis for further ecological studies.

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“…[54] and Panama: Basset et al . [55]) supporting the hypothesis that it is a global pattern. Generally, the effect is more prominent in tropical forest regions than in savannahs.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 65%

A comparison of termite assemblages from West African savannah and forest ecosystems using morphological and molecular markers

2019

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“…Across the three trophic levels, differences in community composition between native Nothofagaceae forests vs. exotic pine plantations were mostly a result of species turnover, which suggests that plantation forests are complementary habitats for some species, but cannot be a substitute habitat for all native forest species. Previous studies have shown that marked turnover of butterfly and termite species (Basset et al, 2017), as well as notable changes in ant species composition (Maeto & Sato, 2004), between native vs. plantation forests are not necessarily reflected in differences in species richness. This highlights the importance of incorporating community composition measures when comparing communities from different habitats, as it allows the assessment of the community as a whole and also seems to be more sensitive to environmental variation than more commonly used diversity metrics, such as species richness (Summerville & Crist, 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Plant, herbivore and parasitoid community composition in native Nothofagaceae forests vs. exotic pine plantations

Peralta

Frost

Didham

2018

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Converting natural areas into land used for production causes dramatic changes in the configuration of landscapes. Both the loss and fragmentation of native habitats contribute to biodiversity loss world‐wide and the consequent creation of artificial edges can have a significant influence on community assembly. The conservation value of plantation forests has been identified for specific species, but it is not clear whether exotic pine plantations can also be used for the preservation of native communities in general. We studied whether community composition of different trophic levels (plants, herbivorous caterpillars, parasitoids) changed across native Nothofagaceae forests to exotic pine plantations, and whether habitat edges affected communities differently depending on the forest type considered. To accomplish this, we sampled plants, herbivorous caterpillars and parasitoids in native Nothofagaceae and exotic pine plantation forests and compared community composition of each trophic level across habitats. We found that community composition of plants, herbivorous caterpillars and parasitoids differed significantly between native and exotic plantation forests, and that variation in the composition of the upper trophic levels was strongly dependent on variation in the composition of the lower trophic level. Moreover, differences in community composition were mostly the result of species turnover, suggesting that plantations are complementary habitats for some species, but cannot be a substitute habitat for all native forest species. Furthermore, edge effects had a strong impact on the composition of native communities, such that certain species were only present in the interior of the native habitat. Synthesis and applications. Large areas of native vegetation, where the interior remains intact, are essential to preserve species that are susceptible to edge effects and that cannot occupy other habitat types. Creating straight instead of winding edges could decrease the impact that plantations have on native forests. Furthermore, increasing the representativeness of native plant communities in exotic plantation forests would cascade up to higher consumer trophic levels, considerably increasing the conservation value of these commercial stands.

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“…The Teak plantations at ARGOS were also outperformed, with respect to species richness of mammals, by forest fragments that are 2-65 times smaller (Meyer et al, 2015), located in the same landscape mosaic. Similarly, a contemporaneous study at ARGOS found that species richness of butterflies was two times greater in Cedro than in Teak (Basset et al, 2017).…”

Section: Species Richnessmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The relatively high occupancy estimates of the common opossum, which is reported to be more terrestrial than arboreal (Adler et al, 2012), could be explained by a noted reduction in canopy connectivity and lianas in these plantations (Basset et al, 2017).…”

Section: Occupancy and Detectionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Tropical timber plantations as habitat for ground‐dwelling mammals: A camera‐trapping assessment in Central Panama

Monteza‐Moreno,

Grote,

Hall

et al. 2024

Biotropica

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Reforestation projects in the tropics often consist of plantations, typically monocultures of non‐native timber species. It has been questioned whether such plantations are suitable as wildlife habitat, but empirical evidence is scarce, especially on plantations embedded on highly disturbed landscapes. Here, we compare species richness and occupancy of ground‐dwelling mammals between five types of plantations within a single area in Central Panama, the narrowest tract of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. We deployed camera traps at stratified random points and followed a hierarchical modeling approach to compare community composition and occupancy between plantation types. We found a total of 16 ground‐dwelling mammals in the area, most of which were small‐bodied and short‐lived, and the majority of species' occupancy probabilities were below 0.5 at any given plantation. Teak (Tectona grandis) plantations, which covered the largest area in the study, had the lowest estimated richness and occupancy, with occupancy probabilities exceeding 0.5 for just three species. Conversely, plantations of the native Pachira quinata and the non‐native Gmelina arborea, covering an area four and nineteen times smaller than Teak, respectively, had higher richness and occupancy. Occupancy values were intermediate in the Acacia and mixed plantation types. Our findings suggest that plantations embedded in lowland tropical landscapes have limited conservation value for large‐bodied mammals, and are ecologically constrained habitats for small‐ and medium‐sized mammals.

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Contrasting the distribution of butterflies and termites in plantations and tropical forests

Cited by 10 publications

References 42 publications

A comparison of termite assemblages from West African savannah and forest ecosystems using morphological and molecular markers

A comparison of termite assemblages from West African savannah and forest ecosystems using morphological and molecular markers

Plant, herbivore and parasitoid community composition in native Nothofagaceae forests vs. exotic pine plantations

Tropical timber plantations as habitat for ground‐dwelling mammals: A camera‐trapping assessment in Central Panama

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