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

In the Amazon, roads are closely intertwined with various social livelihood activities but also cause irreversible environmental destruction. As such, roads engender different infrastructural imaginaries of how economic growth should be pursued, signified and contested in rainforest landscapes. This paper focuses on infrastructural imaginaries of Brazil’s BR-319 Highway, an unfinished road that plunges through some of the best-preserved sections of the Amazon rainforest. Based on a multisited ethnography of the road, it explores the various meanings and functions of ‘growth infrastructures’ in globally vital ecosystems facing destruction. We identify three distinct infrastructural imaginaries: (1) the road as a path to economic development and freedom; (2) the road as unleashing a surge of destruction; and (3) the road as co-existing with sustainability aims. Our analysis reveals how these imaginaries reflect diverse and competing (counter-)articulations of ‘growth’, distinctively shaping human-nature interactions, infrastructural politics and economic futures in the world’s largest rainforest.

Flowering and Fruiting Characteristics and Phenology of an Endemic Monoecious Tree in a Fragmented African Rainforest Landscape

Relief, soil and tree community attributes jointly shape liana community structure and diversity in a Neotropical rainforest landscape

We determined the combined impacts of habitat degradation and recurrent cyclones on a community of small mammals in a rainforest landscape in Madagascar. We used capture-release and morphometry data of 609 individuals of shrew tenrecs, rodents, and nocturnal lemurs, and vegetation surveys from 360 plots in four sites with different degradation levels for four field seasons (2021–2023) separated by two cyclone events. Combined impacts of degradation and cyclones significantly affected small mammals’ diversity and capture abundance and only the body mass of the lesser tufted-tailed rat and brown mouse lemur. Diversity, capture abundance and body mass decreased immediately after the cyclones, and bounced back 4–5 months later, except in the forest fragment. We also examined the independent effects of habitat degradation using vegetation structure as it had more impacts than cyclones on small mammals. Plant diversity, canopy cover percentage, mean diameter at breast height, and estimated height significantly impacted small mammals’ diversity, capture abundance, and body-mass with species-specific variations. Our results suggest that recurrent cyclones may act as an intermediate disturbance factor, while habitat degradation might have permanent impacts on small mammals, emphasizing the importance of long-term monitoring of wild populations to understand their spatiotemporal dynamics and their effective conservation.

Local atmospheric vapor pressure deficit as microclimate index to assess tropical rainforest riparian restoration success.

Abstract The tropical rainforest landscape in East Kalimantan province has proven to be a pivotal driver of the regional and national economy. Spanning 6,055,793 hectares of production forest, a majority of which is under the management of 106 active forest utilization permit holders (PBPH), the region employs the Indonesian Planting Select Logging (TPTI) silviculture system to manage and enhance the value of logged over forest areas. This experiment aims to determine the growth rate of Porang plants in logged over areas forest under the TPTI system using a complete randomized design with six replicates and three treatment levels: without organic fertilizer/control (P0), application of 1000g/plant manure (P1), and biochar + 1000g/plant manure (P2). The data obtained were then subjected to ANOVA test. The test results revealed that the application of biochar + manure 1000g/plant (P2) significantly influenced average growth rate the plant height of 11.34 cm/month, Leave number of 6.17 sheet/month, and fresh tuber yield of 58.7 g. Whereas the control treatment only gave average results plant height of 9.09 cm/month, Leave number of 4.83 sheet/month, and fresh tuber yield of 22.2 g. These findings underscore the potential of Porang as a viable interstitial crop within production forest lands, emphasizing the feasibility of integrating it into agroforestry systems.

Abstract Diversity and functionality of bird communities in tropical agroforests are shaped by their surrounding landscape, particularly the extent and type of natural forest. However, most evidence comes from tropical rainforest landscapes, whereas the bearing of such trends in other forest types remains understudied. We compared functional and beta diversity of bird communities in 23 cacao agroforests embedded in landscapes of two contrasting Peruvian regions: seasonally‐dry tropical forests and subtropical rainforests from the Andean foothills. Strong climatic seasonality affects both landscapes, but forest vegetation structure and complexity differ. We found higher bird species richness ( n = 179 spp) and higher species turnover in the subtropical forest than in the dry forest landscape ( n = 64 spp). Only in the dry forest landscape, distance from forest increased dissimilarity driven by species loss, that is, the nestedness component of beta diversity. This points to the importance of conserving dry tropical forests within the broader landscape matrix, with known benefits for pest control and cacao yield. Functional diversity indices were not influenced by forest distance in either landscape, but the proportion of insects in birds' diet decreased by 27% along a 1 km distance gradient from forest in the subtropical forest landscape. In the dry forest landscape, however, it decreased by only 3% across the same distance gradient. Far from forest (≥1 km), forest specialization decreased by ~33% and 20% in the subtropical and dry forest landscapes, respectively. These differences indicate that regionally‐adapted agroforest management is paramount for conserving bird diversity and ecosystem services as pest control. Procuring high‐canopy shade trees and adequate microhabitats for insectivorous species is essential to maintain biocontrol services in the subtropical forest. Conversely, in the dry forest enhancing low‐canopy vegetation with a focus on frugivores and ensuring forest closeness to agroforests may maximize bird diversity and their ecosystem services. A complete version of this article is translated to Spanish in the supplements.

Tropical forests are characterized by intricate mosaics of species-rich and structurally complex forest communities. Evaluating the functional vulnerability of distinct community patches is of significant importance in establishing conservation priorities within tropical forests. However, previous assessments of functional vulnerability in tropical forests have often focused solely on isolated factors or individual disturbance events, with limited consideration for a broad spectrum of disturbances and the responses of diverse species. We assessed the functional vulnerability of woody plant communities in a 60-ha dynamic plot within a tropical montane rainforest by conducting in silico simulations of a wide range disturbances. These simulations combined plant functional traits and community properties, including the distribution of functional redundancy across the entire trait space, the distribution of abundance across species, and the relationship between species trait distinctiveness and species abundance. We also investigated the spatial distribution patterns of functional vulnerability and their scale effects, and employed a spatial autoregressive model to examine the relationships between both biotic and abiotic factors and functional vulnerability at different scales. The functional vulnerability of tropical montane rainforest woody plant communities was generally high (the functional vulnerability of observed communities was very close to that of the most vulnerable virtual community, with a value of 72.41% on average at the 20m×20m quadrat scale), and they exhibited significant spatial heterogeneity. Functional vulnerability decreased with increasing spatial scale and the influence of both biotic and abiotic factors on functional vulnerability was regulated by spatial scale, with soil properties playing a dominant role. Our study provides new specific insights into the comprehensive assessment of functional vulnerability in the tropical rainforest. We highlighted that functional vulnerabilities of woody plant communities and their sensitivity to environmental factors varied significantly within and across spatial scales in the tropical rainforest landscape. Preserving and maintaining the functionality of tropical ecosystems should take into consideration the variations in functional vulnerability among different plant communities and their sensitivity to environmental factors.

We examined the variation in liana community composition and structure across geopedological land units to test the hypothesis that environmental heterogeneity is a driving force in liana community assembly. The study site was the Los Tuxtlas Tropical Biology Station, SE Mexico, a reserve that encompasses 640 ha of tropical rainforest. We sampled all lianas with basal diameter ≥1 cm in three 0.5‐ha plots established in each of five land units (totaling 15 plots and 7.5 ha). We censused 6055 individuals and 110 species. Overall, the most speciose families were also the most abundant ones. Density and basal area of some dominant liana species differed among land units, and a permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) and a non‐metric multidimensional scaling ordination (NMDS) revealed differences in the presence, density, and basal area of liana species across the landscape. Liana composition and structure were highly heterogeneous among land units, suggesting that variations in soil water availability and relief are key drivers of liana community spatial differentiation. By showing that soil and topography play an important role at the landscape scale, we underscore the ecological relevance of environmental heterogeneity for liana community assembly. In the future, as our ability to assess the local environmental complexity increases, we will gain a better understanding of the liana community assembly process and their heterogeneous distribution in tropical forests.

While the conservation of forest elephants is a global concern, human-elephant conflict (HEC), especially crop-raiding by elephants, is a serious threat to both human livelihoods and conservation efforts. However, only a few studies have explored elephant crop-raiding and related damage mitigation strategies in Central Africa’s forest landscapes, which are characterized by low human and high animal densities and shifting cultivation practices. This study investigates HEC in rural Gabon, where human activities are limited, and local livelihoods are severely threatened by crop-raiding elephants. Through long-term ethnographic research and an in-depth analysis of damage mitigation practices by local people, the study unveils serious crop-raiding by elephants, leading to a significant change in the local lifestyle. Most households spend the majority of days in the field protecting crops, resulting in the village becoming almost empty. In addition to the physical burden of staying in poor living conditions, there is a considerable psychological burden for local people. Establishing effective elephant conservation systems requires understanding each local situation and evaluating the various costs to local people. To sustain livelihoods and address the challenge of HEC, it is crucial for local communities and various stakeholders to act collectively.

Anthropogenic disturbance may increase the emergence of zoonoses. Especially generalists that cope with disturbance and live in close contact with humans and livestock may become reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens. Yet, whether anthropogenic disturbance modifies host-pathogen co-evolutionary relationships in generalists is unknown. We assessed pathogen diversity, neutral genome-wide diversity (SNPs) and adaptive MHC class II diversity in a rodent generalist inhabiting three lowland rainforest landscapes with varying anthropogenic disturbance, and determined which MHC alleles co-occurred more frequently with 13 gastrointestinal nematodes, blood trypanosomes, and four viruses. Pathogen-specific selection pressures varied between landscapes. Genome-wide diversity declined with the degree of disturbance, while MHC diversity was only reduced in the most disturbed landscape. Furthermore, pristine forest landscapes had more functional important MHC–pathogen associations when compared to disturbed forests. We show co-evolutionary links between host and pathogens impoverished in human-disturbed landscapes. This underscores that parasite-mediated selection might change even in generalist species following human disturbance which in turn may facilitate host switching and the emergence of zoonoses.

Abstract. This paper presents the documentation carried out by the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) in collaboration with the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH) to support the conservation of the archaeological pictographs in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Chiribiquete National Park, Colombia; listed in 2018. This project entitled Preserving the past: preventive conservation on World Heritage Site Chiribiquete National Park and its buffer zone (Colombia) is funded by the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP) and managed by the Fundación Erigaie. The dense rainforest landscape includes a mountain range with Tepuis inscribed with Paleoindian pictographs, painted and layered over time. The area was the site of the Colombian armed conflict that ended in 2016 and now remains remote and highly inaccessible. High-resolution 3D dense clouds and meshes of the painted Tepuis were created to record the pictographs with a high level of detail. This method of non-destructive investigation results in minimal impact on the biological environment of the site and on the uncontacted Indigenous communities who continue to inhabit the area, and the results will enable further remote investigation of the pictographs. Such tools demonstrated effectiveness while communicating the mass, scale of the site, colour, and texture of the pictographs at a high level of detail. The non-invasive nature of the immersive documentation is a powerful tool in the ongoing conservation and management of the site by mitigating the impact of tourism, by providing a remote method of sharing and experiencing the archaeological site.

Tropical ecosystems are bio-diverse ecosystems that differ according to varied environmental features. This work assessed the tree diversity and environmental variables that define a rainforest ecosystem in southeast Nigeria. 30 forest plots were used to identify trees ≥ 10 cm (DBH measured at 130 cm). Soil samples were collected up to 30 cm deep at four edges and middle of each plot, and bulked for analysis. The survey recorded a total of 2414 trees that belonged to 102 species and 32 families. Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index (H’) of 3.67, Inverse Simpson’s index (C) of 1.06, species evenness of 0.79 and Margalef’s index of species richness (M) of 12.97 were recorded. Fabaceae family recorded the highest number (1037) of individual tree (being 43% of total) observations, while Burseraceae had the least number (1). Species abundance status showed 2.9% of species as “Abundant”, 73.5% as “Endangered”, 2.9% as “Frequent” and 20.6% of species as “Rare”. Soil variables namely phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, particle sizes (sand, silt and clay), CEC, calcium, pH, and aluminium, influenced the distribution of the vegetation in decreasing order. Edaphic factors (soil) determined the distribution of tree stems, growth and abundance of the species within the region. Efforts on conserving the ecosystem along environmental gradients and according to species status and indices are advocated.

Tropical ecosystems sequester vast amounts of carbon but remain much varied across different landscapes. In order to provide estimates on carbon storage for the ecosystem and show the role of forest structure and environmental factors in determining aboveground and soil carbon of a rainforest landscape, forest inventory was conducted across 30 forest plots. Each of the plots measured 50 m × 50 m and was used to identify and measure tree species ≥ 10 cm diameter at breast height (DBH measured at 130cm). Soil samples were collected for up to 30 cm deep at the four edges and then the middle of each plot, bulked for analysis and tested in the laboratory. Aboveground carbon estimates ranged from 8.18 - 91.29 t/ha across the ecosystem and were similar with carbon storage in tropical landscapes. With variations in stem density, basal area and structure across the region, much of the carbon capacity across the ecosystem was much varied (F (29, 2127) = 3.794, p = 0.000). Environmental variables (mainly edaphic variables) were not positively correlated with soil carbon and did not largely determine its storage and variation. The need to reduce disturbances (which are a main driver of disparity in biomass carbon storage) across the region and across tropical ecosystems was advocated as a pathway to enhancing higher carbon sequestration.

Abstract Understanding the effects of environmental conditions on biodiversity may provide cues regarding the resilience of ecological communities facing human activities in tropical forests. Under this scenario, harvestmen are among the most ideal models for understanding the ecological dynamics associated with shifts in environmental conditions. In this study, we evaluated how changes in attributes related to environmental conditions shape harvestmen assemblages in the Atlantic Forest. We assessed the effect of environmental transformation in four forest fragments with different proportions of native forest cover based on their environmental attributes (temperature, humidity, leaf litter depth and cover, and herbaceous vegetation cover) on harvestmen species richness, abundance, and composition. Overall, 865 harvestmen individuals belonging to six families and 41 species were sampled. The effects of environmental conditions on harvestmen assemblages were context‐dependent. In the most conserved fragment, there was an increase in harvestmen richness and abundance with increasing temperature. Furthermore, herbaceous vegetation cover negatively affected harvestmen richness and abundance. Species turnover was the main driver of harvestmen beta diversity in all forest fragments. With the results presented herein, we demonstrate that harvestmen species richness and abundance are modulated by landscape modifications and subsequent alterations in the environment resulting from human‐induced disturbance. Our results highlight the importance of considering environmental transformations at a large spatial scale (i.e., landscape) and local scale (i.e., environmental attributes) to design appropriate conservation strategies for Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

Habitat fragmentation changes biological communities and its spatiotemporal dynamics – which may lead to either biotic homogenization or heterogenization along time and space. Both processes can occur by addition, replacement or loss of species within communities, altering compositional similarity across the landscape. We investigated which of these two processes (biotic homogenization or heterogenization) occurs, and its possible underlying mechanism, over 15 years in an Atlantic Forest landscape using ants as model organisms. We sampled ants in 17 forest fragments across three different years, compared their composition similarity, species richness, and species richness of groups classified according to their habitat preferences. We sampled a total of 132 ant species. Ant communities in fragments diverged over time, suggesting they experienced an idiosyncratic structuring process. This biotic heterogenization occurred through an additive process, as ant species richness increased over time, mainly due to an increase of generalist ant species, and a decrease of forest specialist ant species. These changes occurred despite the higher forest cover in the landscape along years. Since different species can perform different functions in ecosystems, this biotic heterogenization may have implications for ecosystem functioning. Investigating how disturbances structure biological communities over time, especially those performing important ecosystem functions, can shed light to our understanding of possible changes in ecosystem functions and consequently for forest regeneration.

C4 vegetation characteristics in the monsoon rainforest of the Pearl River delta during the MIS 2 period

Abstract The conservation of tropical biodiversity depends not only on forest remnants, but also on anthropogenic land covers. Some shade crops are considered wildlife-friendly agroecosystems, but their conservation value is context- and taxon-dependent. Amphibians and reptiles have received less attention despite their high sensitivity to habitat disturbance. We determined the conservation value of lightly-harvested rustic cocoa plantations for herpetofauna in the Lacandona region, Mexico. We compared 12 environmental variables between habitats. Then, we compared the abundance, species number and composition of amphibian and reptile assemblages. Within each habitat, we explored the relationships between environmental variables and abundance and species number. Tree density, litter cover and litter depth were higher in cocoa. Abundance of reptiles and amphibians were higher in cocoa than forest; species number did not differ. Habitat explained some of the variation (8%) in assemblage composition. In cocoa, amphibian abundance was positively related to canopy height and the presence of a humus layer, while reptile abundance was negatively related to relative humidity. We conclude that lightly-used rustic cocoa plantations can be suitable habitat for forest herpetofauna. As long as cocoa plantations do not replace existing forest cover, they can play an important role in the design of wildlife-friendly tropical landscapes.

The transformation and depletion of primary forest over the past few decades have placed almost half of the world’s primate species under the threat of extinction. Developing any successful conservation program for primates requires distribution and demography data, as well as an understanding of the relationships between these factors and their habitat. Between March and June 2010 and 2011 we collected data on the presence and demographic parameters of howler and spider monkeys by carrying out surveys, and validated our findings using local knowledge. We then examined the relationship between forest type and the presence of these primates at 54 sites in the northern area of the Selva Zoque Corridor, Mexico. We detected 86 spider monkey groups across 31 plots and censused 391 individuals (mean ± SD = 5.9 ± 3.0 individuals per sub-group, n = 67 sub-groups). We also detected 69 howler monkey groups across 30 plots and censused 117 individuals (mean ± SD = 5.3 ± 2.4 individuals per group, n = 22 groups). Howler monkey presence was not related to any specific vegetation type, while spider monkeys were present in areas with a higher percentage of tall forest (trees > 25 m high). Overall, spider monkeys were more prevalent than howler monkeys in our sampling sites and showed demographic characteristics similar to those in better protected areas, suggesting that the landscape features in the Uxpanapa Valley are suitable for their needs. Conversely, howler monkey presence was found to be more limited than in other regions, possibly due to the extended presence of spider monkeys.