Warning signals of biodiversity collapse across gradients of tropical forest loss

de Oliveira Roque, Fabio, Menezes, Jorge F.S., Northfield, Tobin, Ochoa-Quintero, Jose, Campbell, Mason J., and Laurance, William F. (2018) Warning signals of biodiversity collapse across gradients of tropical forest loss. Scientific Reports, 8. 1622.

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Abstract

We evaluate potential warning signals that may aid in identifying the proximity of ecological communities to biodiversity thresholds from habitat loss—often termed “tipping points”—in tropical forests. We used datasets from studies of Neotropical mammal, frog, bird, and insect communities. Our findings provide only limited evidence that an increase in the variance (heteroskedasticity) of biodiversity-related parameters can provide a general warning signal of impending threshold changes in communities, as forest loss increases. However, such an apparent effect was evident for amphibians in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and Amazonian mammal and bird communities, suggesting that impending changes in some species assemblages might be predictable. We consider the potential of such warning signs to help forecast drastic changes in biodiversity.

Item ID: 52186
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2045-2322
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Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Date Deposited: 13 Mar 2018 01:10
FoR Codes: 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 50%
41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410402 Environmental assessment and monitoring @ 25%
41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4102 Ecological applications > 410299 Ecological applications not elsewhere classified @ 25%
SEO Codes: 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9605 Ecosystem Assessment and Management > 960505 Ecosystem Assessment and Management of Forest and Woodlands Environments @ 50%
96 ENVIRONMENT > 9608 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity > 960806 Forest and Woodlands Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity @ 25%
96 ENVIRONMENT > 9609 Land and Water Management > 960906 Forest and Woodlands Land Management @ 25%
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