Functional diversity and redundancy of amphibians, ants, and dung beetles in passive and active cloud forest restoration

Abstract

Forest restoration practices have increased globally, with positive consequences for biodiversity conservation. However, our understanding of the variation in ecosystem functioning recovery presented among different restoration strategies remains limited, and few studies have compared the functional diversity of contrasting faunal assemblages. Here, we assessed how the functional diversities and functional redundancies of amphibian, ant, and dung beetle assemblages vary among forests of the same age (23 years) under active (native mixed plantations) and passive (natural regeneration) restoration, cattle pasture (degraded ecosystem), and mature cloud forest (reference ecosystem). We also explored how environmental variables relate to the functional diversity of each animal assemblage. We found that functional diversity (measured as functional richness, functional evenness, and functional divergence) and functional redundancy in the three faunal assemblages were similar between the two restoration strategies. However, some attributes of functional diversity did not reach the values of the reference ecosystem, especially in the amphibians and dung beetles. Environmental variables related to functional diversity also depended on the taxonomic group and the metric of functional diversity, but the most important of these variables were vegetation condition, canopy cover and tree density. In our study system, passive and active restoration produced similar recovery rates of functional diversity of the faunal assemblages. Regardless of the restoration strategy implemented, long-term adaptive management strategies must be implemented to ensure full recovery of biodiversity and functionality in Neotropical cloud forest landscapes.