Logging and hunting shift fruit-eating animals from ground to trees
Abensur R, Coutant O, Gloaguen P, Gottstein M, Pelon C
Seed Dispersal
The seeds that grow into tomorrow's forest canopy depend on which animals eat the fruit, and this study shows that hunting and logging quietly swap out ground-feeding seed dispersers for tree-dwelling ones, reshaping what that forest grows into decades from now.
Scientists set up 60 camera traps at nutmeg trees in three French Guiana forests, ranging from fully protected to actively logged and hunted, to see which animals came to eat the fruit. The total number of species stayed about the same everywhere, but the mix changed: in disturbed forests, ground animals like peccaries and trumpeter birds showed up far less, while tree-climbing animals like kinkajous and tamarins showed up more. Since these animals carry seeds to different parts of the forest, this shuffling could change which trees grow back after disturbance.
Key Findings
Species richness stayed consistent across sites (19-20 canopy species, 14-16 understory species) despite different disturbance levels
Terrestrial visitation rates dropped from 232.5 individuals/100 trap-days at the protected site to 87.2 at the most disturbed site, while arboreal visits rose from 43.5 to 80.3
At the most disturbed site, hunted/sensitive ground species (white-lipped peccaries, gray-winged trumpeters) declined while canopy visits from kinkajous and golden-handed tamarins increased
chevron_right Technical Summary
Camera traps in French Guiana's forests found that human disturbance doesn't reduce the number of fruit-eating animal species, but it does change who shows up where: ground-dwelling animals like peccaries decline near disturbed, hunted areas while tree-dwelling animals like kinkajous increase.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Arboreal and Terrestrial Frugivore Vertebrate Assemblage Diversity and Composition Vary With Disturbance Histories in Guianan Forests.
Frugivorous vertebrates, as seed dispersers and predators, play critical roles in forest ecosystem dynamics. Understanding their responses to human disturbances is essential for assessing ecosystem...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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