Seasonal dynamics of terrestrial vertebrate abundance between Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests

Costa, Hugo C.M., Peres, Carlos A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1588-8765 and Abrahams, Mark I. (2018) Seasonal dynamics of terrestrial vertebrate abundance between Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests. PeerJ, 6. ISSN 2167-8359

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Abstract

The flood pulse is the main factor structuring and differentiating the ecological communities of Amazonian unflooded (terra firme) and seasonally-flooded (várzea) forests as they require unique adaptations to survive the prolonged annual floods. Therefore, várzea and terra firme forests hammer out a spatio-temporal mosaic of resource availability, which may result in landscape scale seasonal movements of terrestrial vertebrates between adjacent forest types. Yet the lateral movements of terrestrial vertebrates between hydrologically distinct neighbouring forest types exhibiting staggered resource availability remains poorly understood, despite the important implications of this spatial dynamic for the ecology and conservation of forest wildlife. We examined the hypothesis of terrestrial fauna seasonal movements between two adjacent forest types at two contiguous sustainable-use forest reserves in Western Brazilian Amazonia. We used camera trapping data on the overall species richness, composition, and abundance of nine major vertebrate trophic guilds to infer on terrestrial vertebrate movements as a function of seasonal changes in floodplain water level. Species richness differed in neighboring terra firme forests between the high-and low-water phases of the flood pulse and terra firme forests were more species rich than várzea forests. There were clear differences in species composition between both forest types and seasons. Generalized Linear Models showed that water level was the main factor explaining aggregate abundance of all species and three trophic guilds. Our results indicate that the persistence of viable populations of large terrestrial vertebrates adjacent to major Amazonian rivers requires large, well-connected forest landscapes encompassing different forest types to ensure large-scale lateral movements by forest wildlife.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_on_land
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Biology Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Related URLs:	https://peerj.com/articles/5058
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	20 Jul 2018 10:54
Last Modified:	09 Oct 2024 13:34
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/67686
DOI:	10.7717/peerj.5058

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