title: Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity.
abstract: Human-driven land-use changes increasingly threaten biodiversity, particularly in tropical forests where both species diversity and human pressures on natural environments are high. The rapid conversion of tropical forests for agriculture, timber production and other uses has generated vast, human-dominated landscapes with potentially dire consequences for tropical biodiversity. Today, few truly undisturbed tropical forests exist, whereas those degraded by repeated logging and fires, as well as secondary and plantation forests, are rapidly expanding. Here we provide a global assessment of the impact of disturbance and land conversion on biodiversity in tropical forests using a meta-analysis of 138 studies. We analysed 2,220 pairwise comparisons of biodiversity values in primary forests (with little or no human disturbance) and disturbed forests. We found that biodiversity values were substantially lower in degraded forests, but that this varied considerably by geographic region, taxonomic group, ecological metric and disturbance type. Even after partly accounting for confounding colonization and succession effects due to the composition of surrounding habitats, isolation and time since disturbance, we find that most forms of forest degradation have an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on tropical biodiversity. Our results clearly indicate that when it comes to maintaining tropical biodiversity, there is no substitute for primary forests.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Singapore. lggibson@nus.edu.sg
authors.forename: Luke
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gibson
authors.forename: Tien Ming
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Lian Pin
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Koh
authors.forename: Barry W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Brook
authors.forename: Toby A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Gardner
authors.forename: Jos
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Barlow
authors.forename: Carlos A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Peres
authors.forename: Corey J A
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Bradshaw
authors.forename: William F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Laurance
authors.forename: Thomas E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Lovejoy
authors.forename: Navjot S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Sodhi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D006801:Humans; D014197:Trees; D014329:Tropical Climate