Mapping Malaysian Rainforest Landscape in Children’s Fantasy Novel: Hamra and the Jungle of Memories by Hanna Alkaf

Carrion decomposition is an important component of the ecosystem and plays a significant ecological role in the food chain. During decomposition, arthropods and microorganisms help to decompose and recycle organic matter and nutrients. Although research has been conducted on microorganisms and arthropods associated with carrion across different biogeoclimatic ecoregions, no study has identified these communities from carrion placed under a tropical rainforest. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the arthropod, bacterial, and fungal communities associated with Sus scrofa Linnaeus. carrion placed in a tropical rainforest in Malaysia. Adult flies and maggots and other arthropods were collected during the forensic entomological survey. The specimens collected were killed, separated, preserved in 70% ethanol, and identified using a stereomicroscope in the laboratory. Swab samples were collected from the skin, anal, and oral cavity of the wild boar carrion. Both bacterial and fungal communities were identified using Sanger sequencing. Data on temperature and humidity were recorded with a data logger throughout the four-day experiment. The results demonstrated that the most isolated bacteria were those of uncultured_bacteria, Ignatzschineria sp. and Gram-negative bacteria, especially Acinetobacter sp., during the early stages of decomposition. Furthermore, the consistent presence of Ascomycota fungi, particularly Exophiala sp., Yarrowia sp., and Meyerozyma sp., suggests their unique occurrence specifically in the tropical rainforest. A total of 219 adult flies and about 9,200 larvae were collected from a wild boar carcass over three days, with Chrysomya pinguis and Chrysomya villeneuvi being the main species, and the latter displaying notable predatory behaviour. These results present for the first time the dominant arthropods, bacteria and fungi inhabiting the carrion in one of the oldest rainforests in the world. (Keyword: Carrion, decomposition, bacteria, fungi, arthropods, tropical rainforest, Malaysia)Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00414-025-03598-9.

Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rainforest. By Alice Rudge. 2023. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 326pp. $75.00 (hardcover or e- book).

Background: Acne vulgaris, a common dermatological disorder that affects around 85% of individuals and is characterized by inflammation and infection. Natural products and traditional medicines have been used as alternative treatments to chemical-based products due to negative side effects and drug resistance. Objective: This review aims to provide an overview of the anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antibacterial properties of Malaysian medicinal plants for use in acne. Methodology: The databases used were the National Center for Biotechnology (NCBI), PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Science Direct. At least one keyword or combination of the following terms: i) antibacterial, ii) anti-inflammatory, iii) antioxidant, iv) anti-acne, v) antimicrobial, vi) Malaysia, and vii) medicinal plants, were used for the search. Results: Eurycoma longifolia Jack, Quercus infectoria, Strobilanthes crispus, Aquilaria crassna, Ficus deltoidea Jack, Phyllanthus emblica, Barringtonia racemosa, Boesenbergia rotunda L, Rhinacanthus nasutus, Tacca integrifolia rhizome, Clinacanthus Nutans, Labisa pumila Benth. Morinda citrifolia with Psidium guajava L. leaves, Cinnamomum verum, Moringa oleifera, Salix alba, Gaultheria fragrantissima, Garcinia mangostana, Azadirachta indica, and Aloe barbadensis miller have been linked to the use as potential anti-acne agents. Conclusion: Malaysia's rainforest herbs have the potential to be used in formulations for adjunct treatment to currently available anti-acne agents due to their antiinflammatory and antibacterial bioactivities.

Rapid urban development impacts the integrity of tropical ecosystems on broad spatiotemporal scales. However, sustained long-term monitoring poses significant challenges, particularly in tropical regions. In this context, ecoacoustics emerges as a promising approach to address this gap. Yet, harnessing insights from extensive acoustic datasets presents its own set of challenges, such as the time and expertise needed to label species information in recordings. Here, this study presents an approach to investigating soundscapes: the use of a deep neural network trained on time-of-day estimation. This research endeavors to (1) provide a qualitative analysis of the temporal variation (daily and monthly) of the soundscape using conventional ecoacoustic indices and deep ecoacoustic embeddings, (2) compare the predictive power of both methods for time-of-day estimation, and (3) compare the performance of both methods for supervised classification and unsupervised clustering to the specific recording site, habitat type, and season. The study's findings reveal that conventional acoustic indices and the proposed deep ecoacoustic embeddings approach exhibit overall comparable performance. This article concludes by discussing potential avenues for further refinement of the proposed method, which will further contribute to understanding of soundscape variation across time and space.

Malaysian rainforests have become highly disturbed and converted for export-oriented agriculture and urban-industrial infrastructure. Odonata guilds were studied at two breeding sites in pristine and disturbed forested upland Saraca streams of the upper Klang River basin, Malaysia in November 1964 to December 1964. Their lessons could offer clues for biodiversity conservation in fragmented river basins. Adult Odonata species were found to depend on scarce and changing spatio-temporal habitats, and oviposition resources in fragmented riparian biotopes, occurring mostly in pool biotopes. Their species distribution exhibited a log-series pattern, with most species being rare while few were abundant (dominant). Higher species density occurred in disturbed than in pristine biotopes. Adult Odonata species phenology varied over short temporal scales – weekly and monthly, if not daily – with changes in habitat and oviposition resource availability in biotopes affected by unpredictable rainfall, and flows or spates influencing spatio-temporal land-water interactions. Adult aggregation and breeding occurred mainly during rainless days during the ending of the Northeast Monsoon, when water levels recede and become somewhat stable. Eurytopic non-riverine species with high biotic potential dominated disturbed forested streams and ‘masked’, but not displaced, the phenology of rarer riverine species. These findings highlighted the need to explore alternatives for conserving Odonata species guilds and biodiversity in fractal patches, fragmented landscapes, and ecosystems affected by ecohydrological and ecotonal functions, to generate specific ecosystem goods and services for sustainable use through biogeographic approaches in co-management in river basins.

Merapoh, Pahang, is an area rich with limestone karst located within the Lipis National Geopark and home to the Sungai Relau gate of Taman Negara Pahang, a totally protected rainforest in Malaysia. Much of the research conducted here is mainly inside the National Park, with few published faunal records for the Merapoh caves. This study compiled the data on the bat species diversity of eight Merapoh caves (March 2020 to March 2022) using mist nets and harp traps. Our results indicate that Chiroptera diversity at Merapoh caves is rich, with a total of 32 species recorded from 865 individuals and four new locality records for the State of Pahang, namely Rousettusleschenaultii, Lyrodermalyra, Rhinolophuscoelophyllus and Hipposiderospomona. Gua Gunting has the highest diversity of bats recorded in this study (19 species). Significant Merapoh caves with bat colony roosts in Merapoh include Gua Jinjang Pelamin (Eonycterisspelaea & Rousettusleschenaultii), Gua Tahi Bintang (Hipposideroslarvatus) and Gua Pasir Besar (Miniopterusmedius). Rhinolophusconvexus, previously recorded only in upper montane rainforests, was also recorded in Merapoh caves indicating that this species can also be found in lower elevations than previously thought. Based on the findings of the current study and additional records from two previous studies, the Merapoh bat species diversity checklist totalled up to 38 species. On the whole, the rich bat diversity in Merapoh is reflective of its immense limestone karst landscape, which highlights the reason Lipis National Geopark has been recently gazetted. Future bat research should continue here and in other karsts within Lipis Geopark to sustainably conserve biological diversity, manage geological structures and raise awareness amongst the locals to appreciate their national heritage.

Abstract This article explores how people formulate alterity as a responsive endeavour as they seek to live well in a context of profound marginality at the edges of a Malaysian rainforest. It argues that Batek people often narrate, encounter, and enact alterity – drawing distinctions between themselves and Others – through and in relation to acts of sharing. By exploring a diverse set of instances in which decisions about how and whether to share produces moments of tension, this article investigates the conditions of alterity that underlie sharing's very possibility. This involves asking not only how alterity is produced among Batek people, but also how it is extended outwards, both to those Batek term gɔp (outsiders), and to the dead people who continue to intrude in their lives. Through tracing these everyday moments where alterities are worked out between Batek and gɔp, and the living and the dead, it becomes apparent that as people encounter often‐unpredictable Others, an attitude of what Renato Rosaldo calls ‘social grace’ comes to the fore. Retheorizing alterity in the light of ‘social grace’ demonstrates it to be a responsive, indeterminate process of managing detachment and connection through the immediacy of the diverse encounters and ruptures of everyday life.

Rudge, Alice: Sensing Others. Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rainforest

Deforestation remains one of the key concerning activities around the world due to commodity-driven extraction, agricultural land expansion, and urbanization. The effective and efficient monitoring of national forests using remote sensing technology is important for the early detection and mitigation of deforestation activities. Deep learning techniques have been vastly researched and applied to various remote sensing tasks, whereby fully convolutional neural networks have been commonly studied with various input band combinations for satellite imagery applications, but very little research has focused on deep networks with high-resolution representations, such as HRNet. In this study, an optimal semantic segmentation architecture based on high-resolution feature maps and an attention mechanism is proposed to label each pixel of the satellite imagery input for forest identification. The selected study areas are located in Malaysian rainforests, sampled from 2016, 2018, and 2020, downloaded using Google Earth Pro. Only a two-class problem is considered for this study, which is to classify each pixel either as forest or non-forest. HRNet is chosen as the baseline architecture, in which the hyperparameters are optimized before being embedded with an attention mechanism to help the model to focus on more critical features that are related to the forest. Several variants of the proposed methods are validated on 6120 sliced images, whereby the best performance reaches 85.58% for the mean intersection over union and 92.24% for accuracy. The benchmarking analysis also reveals that the attention-embedded high-resolution architecture outperforms U-Net, SegNet, and FC-DenseNet for both performance metrics. A qualitative analysis between the baseline and attention-based models also shows that fewer false classifications and cleaner prediction outputs can be observed in identifying the forest areas.

Abstract. Shahimi S, Jamaludin AA, Ahmad A. 2023. Species richness and phytogeographic affinities of rattan genus Korthalsia in Malaysia. Biodiversitas 24: 5764-5778. The clustering climbing palm genus Korthalsia Blume (Arecaceae: Calamoideae: Calameae) is widespread in the Malesian region with 28 documented species. However, as many as 18 species are available in Malaysian rainforests. An inquiry was carried out in 2019 throughout Malaysia that included species richness and phytogeographic affinities for Korthalsia. Currently, Korthalsia is highly diverse in Sabah and Sarawak, with 15 species documented in this region, whereas 9 species are present in the Malay Peninsula. Species of Korthalsia were dominated by Korthalsia echinometra Becc., Korthalsia flagellaris Miq., Korthalsia hispida Becc., Korthalsia rigida Blume, and Korthalsia rostrata Blume, which suggests their prevalence in richness compared to being diverse; only 5 species found in all regions. The species accumulation curve indicates that this region's rattan community is moderately rich. There is an east-west separation for the distribution of rattan species in Peninsular Malaysia. This work's novelty reflects a new record for the distribution of K. hispida in Penang that indicates reductions in occurrence for known distributions. Perhaps underscores on significance and inadequacies related to continuous monitoring were responsible for efforts to develop a comprehensive understanding of the diversity, distribution, and potential discoveries for Korthalsia. This indicates risks from development because accessibility is improved and allows researchers to reach further terrain that previously could not be explored. However, despite this weakness, a correct checklist should be constructed for existing rainforests so Korthalsia dispersal, diversity, and richness can be correctly archived.

Differentiations in the habitat and resource utilisation lead to segregation and specialisation of niches for bats within the structurally complex tropical rainforest in Malaysia. This research aims to characterise chiropterans’ assemblages found in two different habitat types in Tasik Kenyir (dipterocarp forest) and Setiu (oil palm plantation). A total of 48 sampling nights were conducted within two years period from March 2017 to March 2019 which covered four sampling sites in Tasik Kenyir and four sites at Setiu. Two standard four-bank harp traps and 10 mist nets were deployed throughout the study at every site to capture bats at understory levels. This makes a total of 576 sampling efforts for both areas. Song Meter SM2bats and Echo Meter Touch from Wildlife Acoustic were used to record the echolocation of insectivorous bats. The total number of individuals and species observed were used to determine species diversity, richness, and evenness. Paleontological statistic software was used to generate the rank abundance and species accumulation curves. Bray-Curtis similarity index was used to generalise the index that represents the relative abundance of the sampling sites. A total of 835 individuals comprising 31 species from six families were captured at both study areas. Out of 835 individuals, 695 were captured within Tasik Kenyir comprising 27 species from six families (H = 2.381) while 140 individuals were captured in Setiu comprising 20 species from five families (H = 2.40). The diversity of bats in Tasik Kenyir was hypothesised to be higher than in Setiu as the habitat possess a larger undisturbed forest. However, the result showed the opposite in which no significant difference was detected from the diversity index calculated between these two areas. Detailed studies need to be conducted to determine if some areas are used as transient habitats for bats.

Reviewed by: A Walk Though the Rain Forest by Martin Jenkins Elizabeth Bush Jenkins, Martin A Walk Though the Rain Forest; illus. by Vicky White. Candlewick, 2022 [48p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536211207 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 5-8 yrs Considering the forest here is the Taman Negara tropical rainforest in Malaysia, the titular walk promises to be an intriguing one. Readers know a lot of animals [End Page 51] live here, and Jenkins can enumerate a great many of them: "Ten kinds of owls, nine kinds of hornbills, eighteen kinds of woodpeckers." Some, however, he can't: "Goodness knows how many kinds of beetles (I certainly don't)." Those animals, spread out and well hidden, aren't easy to spot, so observers have to listen rather than simply look when carefully studying the trees. Jenkins highlights a puzzle: "All the trees here are big and old. There are no small, young ones." So, how does the rainforest keep itself going? The focus turns now to gathering clues: a fig tree where lots of animals feast; fig seeds broken open on the ground; trees too dense to admit much sunlight; piles of animal poop in a clearing; seeds in the poop; nutrients in the poop: "This is how it works: … When the animals poop, with luck they'll poop out some seeds somewhere good to grow." Jenkins' easy, conversational tone, and White's stunningly photorealistic paint and pencil mise en scène transform the shadowy, unfamiliar rainforest into an inviting milieu—wondrous but not too mysterious for a primary schooler to begin to grasp. A map, supplemental information, thumbnails of animals lurking in the illustrations, an index, and a brief resource list are included. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The study of prey-predator interactions between land snails and birds offers important insights into evolutionary and ecological relationships. Here, we report a case study of rock anvils presumably used by the birds Myophonuscaeruleus and Enicurusruficapillus in a cave cavity of a limestone hill in Malaysia. We did not detect any other species in the plots and, therefore, based on our short study duration, we cannot rule out the possibility that other species, such as mammals, preyed on the snails. The predated shell remains of four land snails namely, Hemiplecta sp., Cyclophorusperdixperdix, Amphidromusatricallosusperakensis and Cyclophorussemisulcatus, were found around rock anvils in the nine plots. Finally, we discussed the potential and the limitations of using shell remains of preyed land snails for behavioural, ecological and evolutionary studies between land snails and their predators.

Abstract Terrestrial leeches can be useful tools for wildlife assessment. However, limited information is available on their fundamental ecology, such as temporal activity patterns and habitat preferences in tropical rainforests. Therefore, this study aimed to reveal the temporal (diel and seasonal) and spatial patterns of active leech abundance and identify abiotic and biotic factors (abundance of potential hosts) involved in shaping the abundance patterns at Endau Rompin National Park (ERNP) in southern peninsular Malaysia. We conducted surveys on the relative abundance of active brown leeches (Haemadipsa sp.) at 99 sampling points repeatedly over 18 months, and installed camera traps to quantify the relative abundance of wildlife and humans at 24 of the sampling points. Although no consistent diel and seasonal patterns were observed in leech relative abundance, the abundance showed a strong positive correlation with air humidity at the sampling time. Similarly, the spatial pattern of leech relative abundance was positively correlated with air humidity and proximity to the nearest river at the sampling sites. The mean relative abundance of active leeches was 2–3 times higher on trails than off trails. However, there was no significant correlation between relative abundance of leeches and that of wildlife and humans on trails. Therefore, leech abundance was largely determined by air humidity rather than host abundance, suggesting the difficulty of its use as an indicator of wildlife abundance at fine spatial scales. Instead, utilizing the sensitivity of leeches to drier environments, terrestrial leeches could be useful as an indicator of intact tropical rainforests.Abstract in Malay is available with online material.

The secondary metabolites of endemic plants from the Rutaceae family, such as Burkillanthus malaccensis (Ridl.) Swingle from the rainforest of Malaysia, has not been studied. Burkillanthus malaccensis (Ridl.) Swingle may produce antibacterial and antibiotic-potentiating secondary metabolites. Hexane, chloroform, and methanol extracts of leaves, bark, wood, pericarps, and endocarps were tested against bacteria by broth microdilution assay and their antibiotic-potentiating activities. Chromatographic separations of hexane extracts of seeds were conducted to investigate effective phytochemicals and their antibacterial activities. Molecular docking studies of werneria chromene and dihydroxyacidissiminol against SARS-CoV-2 virus infection were conducted using AutoDock Vina. The methanol extract of bark inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa with the minimum inhibitory concentration of 250, 500, and 250 µg/mL, respectively. The chloroform extract of endocarps potentiated the activity of imipenem against imipenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. The hexane extract of seeds increased the sensitivity of P. aeruginosa against ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin. The hexane extract of seeds and chloroform extract of endocarps were chromatographed, yielding werneria chromene and dihydroxyacidissiminol. Werneria chromene was bacteriostatic for P. aeruginosa and P. putida, with MIC/MBC values of 1000 > 1000 µg/mL. Dihydroxyacidissiminol showed the predicted binding energies of −8.1, −7.6, −7.0, and −7.5 kcal/mol with cathepsin L, nsp13 helicase, SARS-CoV-2 main protease, and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain S-RBD. Burkillanthus malaccensis (Ridl.) Swingle can be a potential source of natural products with antibiotic-potentiating activity and that are anti-SARS-CoV-2.

Forests are extremely important ecological reservoirs and contribute significantly to the balance of global carbon cycling and carbon sequestration. In order to fully develop the carbon storage capacity of forests and consider the development of forest social efficiency, it is necessary to establish a reasonable model for the efficiency of forest carbon sequestration. The model should give effective management methods for different types of forests to replace the current widespread practice of over-logging or over-protection. We studied the carbon sequestration of forest vegetation and forest products separately and established a carbon sequestration model based on the effective area of forest. By simulating the effects of different rotation periods on forest carbon sequestration capacity, we conclude that a short rotation of about 10 years is most conducive to carbon sequestration in forests. On top of that, we extend the above evaluation model to the whole world, taking the Malaysian rainforest as an example to explore the best forest management model.

Oil palm (OP) plantations are gradually replacing tropical rainforest in Malaysia, one of the largest palm oil producers globally. Conversion of lands to OP plantations has been associated with compositional shifts of the microbial community, with consequences on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While the impact of the change in land use has recently been investigated for microorganisms involved in N2O emission, the response of the aerobic methanotrophs to OP agriculture remains to be determined. Here, we monitored the bacterial community composition, focusing on the aerobic methanotrophs, in OP agricultural soils since 2012, 2006, and 1993, as well as in a tropical rainforest, in 2019 and 2020. High-affinity methane uptake was confirmed, showing significantly lower rates in the OP plantations than in the tropical rainforest, but values increased with continuous OP agriculture. The bacterial, including the methanotrophic community composition, was modified with ongoing OP agriculture. The methanotrophic community composition was predominantly composed of unclassified methanotrophs, with the canonical (Methylocystis) and putative methanotrophs thought to catalyze high-affinity methane oxidation present at higher relative abundance in the oldest OP plantation. Results suggest that the methanotrophic community was relatively more stable within each site, exhibiting less temporal variations than the total bacterial community. Uncharacteristically, a 16S rRNA gene-based co-occurrence network analysis revealed a more complex and connected community in the OP agricultural soil, which may influence the resilience of the bacterial community to disturbances. Overall, we provide a first insight into the ecology and role of the aerobic methanotrophs as a methane sink in OP agricultural soils.

Abstract General flowering, in which hundreds of species synchronize their flowering at multi‐year intervals, is a puzzle to ecologists. It is hypothesized that species taking part in general flowering time their reproduction to meet favorable environmental conditions for seedling establishment. We tested this environmental prediction hypothesis using 14‐year weekly flower records of five Shorea species (Dipterocarpaceae) and daily meteorological data in a lowland rain forest in Malaysia. We first investigated causal inference between three potential flowering triggers (cooling, drought, and the synergistic signal of cooling and drought) and flowering. We then explored the causality between flowering triggers and moisture condition during seedling establishment. Our results demonstrated that the synergistic signal of cooling and drought causally influences flowering phenology with the highest predictability for the timing of flowering. Both drought and the synergistic signal of cooling and drought are causally linked to favorable wet conditions during seedling establishment, but the predictability of future rainfall by the synergistic signal was higher than the drought alone. These results support the environmental prediction hypothesis and raise the question as to whether climate change allows the prediction to hold for plant regeneration in the future.

Abstract Despite its broad implications for community structure and dynamics, we lack a clear understanding of how forest productivity is partitioned among tree species. As leaf mass per unit of standing biomass declines with tree size, species achieving larger stature should show lower relative productivity as compared to smaller stature species. However, many observations indicate large‐stature species grow faster than small‐stature species. In this study, we address this apparent paradox, and clarify interspecific trade‐offs between turnover rates and maximum size in terms of forest‐level productivity and biomass storage. We examined data from the 1990 and 2000 surveys of the Pasoh 50‐ha plot of Malaysian rain forest. In these data, individual stems ≥1 cm stem diameter (dbh) have been identified, marked, measured and mapped. We applied site‐specific equations to estimate tree biomass from dbh. We estimated species‐level productivity and loss rates that are less influenced by census interval‐related effects and biases. Among 390 abundant tree species, species with high stand‐level biomass were predominantly those large‐stature species where individuals could achieve large sizes. We found that relative (= per‐species‐biomass) productivity and loss rate, per‐capita recruitment and mortality of species were all negatively correlated to species biomass and maximum size, but not to species abundance. Large‐stature species grew faster than small‐stature species at the same tree sizes up to 36 cm dbh. However, the relative growth of large species at their maximum size markedly declined. As a result, tree‐level relative growth at maximum size and species‐level relative productivity decreased with species‐level biomass. Performing further analyses using smaller plots in four old‐growth forests in Indonesia and Japan, we observed a similar interspecific negative relationship between relative productivity and biomass. We expect this phenomenon is widespread across species‐rich forests. Synthesis. How productivity is partitioned among species determines and reflects forest ecosystem functioning and species coexistence. Many species with low biomass and small maximum stem sizes disproportionally contribute to forest primary productivity, rapid recovery and resilience. In contrast, long‐lived, high‐biomass species contribute disproportionally to ecosystem stability and carbon storage. This complementarity reflects differentiation by adult stature among species.