Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

An annotated checklist of the birds of Pulau Tioman, Peninsular Malaysia

Raffles Bulletin of Zoology476 SUPPL.125-13

Changes in autumn arrival of long-distance migratory birds in Southeast Asia

Climate-change-induced phenological changes in migratory birds are predicted from ecological theory and have been well-documented in temperate-zone breeding areas. By contrast, changes in arrival date on tropical wintering grounds have not been reported. To address this gap, we analysed birdwatchers’ records of first arrival dates of 9 species of long-distance migratory birds in Singapore from 1987 to 2009. The study species included 1 raptor, 3 waders and 5 passerines. We compared the relative influence of year, Southern Oscillation Index and observer effort on arrival date. There was strong evidence for an arrival delay of approximately 2 d yr-1 (95% confidence intervals of 1-3 d) in Japanese sparrowhawk Accipiter gularis and curlew sandpiper Calidris ferruginea, but there was no change in arrival date for the other 7 species. We hypothesise that climate change is causing a shift in migration timing for some birds in Southeast Asia. A mechanism for the delay in these long-distance migrants may be that warmer temperatures enable species to remain on northern breeding grounds longer. Delayed arrival on the wintering grounds may have cascading effects on a migratory species’ annual cycle, for example by influencing the arrival date at the breeding grounds, which can impact fitness. These potential impacts underscore the need for further work on the effects of climate change on migratory species in the tropics.J. Berton C. Harris, Ding Li Yong, Navjot S. Sodhi, R. Subaraj, Damien A. Fordham, Barry W. Broo

Insect extinctions on a small denuded Bornean island

10.1007/s10531-009-9585-7Biodiversity and Conservation192485-490BONS

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.William F. Laurance, D. Carolina Useche, Julio Rendeiro, Margareta Kalka, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Sean P. Sloan, Susan G. 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