Degraded Lands Worth Protecting: the Biological Importance of Southeast Asia's Repeatedly Logged Forests.
Background
The study examines the impacts of second logging cycles on biodiversity by comparing species richness, species composition and population-level responses of birds and dung beetle species across unlogged forest, first rotation forest, and second rotation forest in Sabah, Malaysia.
Research Goals & Methods
The authors sample 18 sites, 6 for each forest type, over a two year period. They use point count and mist net censuses for bird species and pitfall traps to count dung beetles.
Conclusions & Takeaways
The study shows that species richness did not decline between the three forest types, but that significant differences in species composition exist with a loss of endemic species only during the second rotation. Given that 75% of birds and dung beetle species found in unlogged forest were also present after the second rotation, the authors suggest that second rotation forest may be worthy of conservation and should not be put up as a natural choice for conversion to plantations.
Reference:
Degraded lands worth protecting: the biological importance of Southeast Asia\textquotesingles repeatedly logged forests. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2011;278:82–90. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.1062.
Affiliation:
- Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, University of Leeds, UK
- Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, USA
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, USA
- School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK