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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Changes in arthropod assemblages along a wide gradient of disturbance in gabon
Conservation Biology, Volume 22, No. 6, Year 2008
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Description
Searching for indicator taxa representative of diverse assemblages, such as arthropods, is an important objective of many conservation studies. We evaluated the impacts of a wide gradient of disturbance in Gabon on a range of arthropod assemblages representing different feeding guilds. We examined 4 × 105 arthropod individuals from which 21 focal taxa were separated into 1534 morphospecies. Replication included the understory of 3 sites in each of 4 different stages of forest succession and land use (i.e., habitats) after logging (old and young forests, savanna, and gardens). We used 3 complementary sampling methods to survey sites throughout the year. Overall differences in arthropod abundance and diversity were greatest between forest and open habitats, and cleared forest invaded by savanna had the lowest abundance and diversity. The magnitude of faunal differences was much smaller between old and young forests. When considered at this local scale, anthropogenic modification of habitats did not result in a monotonous decline of diversity because many herbivore pests and their associated predators and parasitoids were abundant and diverse in gardens, where plant productivity was kept artificially high year-round through watering and crop rotation. We used a variety of response variables to measure the strength of correlations across survey locations among focal taxa. These could be ranked as follows in terms of decreasing number of significant correlations: species turnover > abundance > observed species richness > estimated species richness > percentage of site-specific species. The number of significant correlations was generally low and apparently unrelated to taxonomy or guild structure. Our results emphasize the value of reporting species turnover in conservation studies, as opposed to simply measuring species richness, and that the search for indicator taxa is elusive in the tropics. One promising alternative might be to consider "predictor sets" of a small number of taxa representative of different functional groups, as identified in our study. © 2008 Society for Conservation Biology.
Authors & Co-Authors
Basset, Yves
United States, Washington, D.c.
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Missa, Olivier
United Kingdom, York
University of York
Alonso, Alfonso
United States, Washington, D.c.
Smithsonian Institution
Miller, Scott E.
United States, Washington, D.c.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Curletti, Gianfranco
Italy, Rome
Museo Civico Di Storia Naturale
de Meyer, Marc
Belgium, Tervuren
Royal Museum for Central Africa
Eardley, Connal D.
South Africa, Pretoria
Plant Protection Research Institute, Pretoria
Lewis, Owen T.
United Kingdom, Oxford
University of Oxford
Mansell, Mervyn W.
South Africa, Pretoria
University of Pretoria
Novotný, Vojtěch
Czech Republic, Ceske Budejovice
Jihočeská Univerzita V Českých Budějovicích
Wagner, Thomas
Germany, Koblenz am Rhein
Universität Koblenz-landau
Statistics
Citations: 64
Authors: 11
Affiliations: 11
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01017.x
ISSN:
08888892
e-ISSN:
15231739
Study Design
Cross Sectional Study
Study Approach
Quantitative
Study Locations
Gabon