Assessing the value of secondary forest for amphibians: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Eleutherodactylus</Emphasis> frogs in a gradient of forest alteration |
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Authors: | Gentile Francesco Ficetola Dario Furlani Giorgio Colombo Fiorenza De Bernardi |
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Institution: | 1.Dipartimento di Biologia,Università degli Studi di Milano,Milano,Italy;2.Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine, équipe Génomique des Populations et Biodiversité,Université de Savoie,Le Bourget du Lac Cedex,France;3.Medizinische Fakult?t,Universit?t Rostock,Rostock,Germany |
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Abstract: | Secondary forests constitute a growing portion of forested areas worldwide. They might have a substantial role for the conservation
of biodiversity in tropical areas, but there is little information on their potential to support forest species and the recovery
of faunal communities. We studied two forest frogs (Eleutherodactylus diastema and E. fitzingeri) in an area of Costa Rica composed of a mosaic of primary forest, young secondary forest and pasture, and we compared the
density of calling males in areas with different forest alteration. Autoregressive models were used to compensate for potentially
undesired effects of spatial autocorrelation and pseudoreplication. Both species were most abundant in riparian, primary forest.
However, E. fitzingeri was also abundant in riparian secondary forests, and its density far from the river was similar in primary and secondary
forest, suggesting that river proximity can influence the recovery of secondary forest for amphibians. Conversely, the density
of E. diastema was similar in secondary forest and pasture, stressing interspecific differences for recovery rate. These frogs have a keystone
role in nutrient cycling and food webs, and their prompt recovery might represent an important step for the functional recovery
of forests. Nevertheless, the strong interspecific differences stress the complexity of these processes. |
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Keywords: | Abundance Amphibian conservation Audio strip transects Costa Rica Deforestation Eleutherodactylus diastema Eleutherodactylus fitzingeri Tropical forest |
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