Research Articles
http://ir.must.ac.ug/xmlui/handle/123456789/304
2024-03-28T10:13:32ZEvolutionary history and environmental variability structure contemporary tropical vertebrate communities
http://ir.must.ac.ug/xmlui/handle/123456789/3500
Evolutionary history and environmental variability structure contemporary tropical vertebrate communities
Hsieh, Chia; Gorczynski, Daniel; Bitariho, Robert; Espinosa, Santiago; Johnson, Steig; Lima, Marcela Guimarães Moreira; Rovero, Francesco; Salvador, Julia; Santos, Fernanda; Sheil, Douglas; Beaudrot, Lydia
Linear regression models, we test three non- mutually exclusive hypotheses by comparing the relative importance of colonization time, palaeo-environmental changes in temperature and land cover since 3.3 Mya, contemporary seasonality in temperature and productivity and environmental heterogeneity for predicting community phylogenetic and functional structure.
Results: Phylogenetic and functional structure showed non- significant yet varying tendencies towards clustering or dispersion in all communities. Mammals had stronger multi- trait PS in ecological strategies than birds (mean PS: mammal = 0.62, bird = 0.43). Distinct dominant processes were identified for mammal and bird communities. For mammals, colonization time and elevation range significantly predicted phylogenetic clustering and functional dispersion tendencies respectively. For birds, elevation range and contemporary temperature seasonality significantly predicted phylogenetic and functional clustering tendencies, respectively, while habitat diversity significantly predicted functional dispersion tendencies.
Main conclusions: Our results reveal different eco-evolutionary assembly processes structuring contemporary tropical mammal and bird communities over evolutionary timescales that have shaped tropical diversity. Our study identified marked differences among taxonomic groups in the relative importance of historical colonization and sensitivity to environmental change.
2024-01-01T00:00:00ZTropical field stations yield high conservation return on investment
http://ir.must.ac.ug/xmlui/handle/123456789/3452
Tropical field stations yield high conservation return on investment
Eppley, Timothy M.; Reuter, Kim E.; Sefczek, Timothy M.; Tinsman, Jen; Santini, Luca; Hoeks, Selwyn; Bitariho, Robert; Andriantsaralaza, Seheno; Shanee, Sam; DiFiore, Anthony
Conservation funding is currently limited; cost-effective conservation solutions are essential. We suggest that the thousands of field stations worldwide can play key roles at the frontline of biodiversity conservation and have high intrinsic value. We assessed field stations’ conservation return on investment and explored the impact of COVID-19. We surveyed leaders of field stations across tropical regions that host primate research; 157 field stations in 56 countries responded. Respondents reported improved habitat quality and reduced hunting rates at over 80% of field stations and lower operational costs per km2 than protected areas, yet half of those surveyed have less funding now than in 2019. Spatial analyses support field station presence as reducing deforestation. These “earth observatories” provide a high return on investment; we advocate for increased support of field station programs and for governments to support their vital conservation efforts by investing accordingly
2024-01-01T00:00:00ZConsistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities
http://ir.must.ac.ug/xmlui/handle/123456789/3342
Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities
Cooper, Declan L. M.; Lewis, Simon L.; Sullivan, Martin J. P.; Prado, Paulo I.; Steege, Hans ter; Bitariho, Robert; Barbier, Nicolas; Slik, Ferry
Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1–6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees.
2024-01-10T00:00:00ZThe politics of mourning in conservation conflicts: The (un) grievability of life and less-than-human geographies
http://ir.must.ac.ug/xmlui/handle/123456789/3335
The politics of mourning in conservation conflicts: The (un) grievability of life and less-than-human geographies
Akampurira, Emmanuel; Marijnen, Esther
Accounts of conservation conflicts often reveal that people living around protected areas feel like their lives are less valued than animals’ lives —they are confined to ‘less-than-human geographies’. Recent literature on necropolitical ecology illustrates how such geographies were created and maintained by the state, which holds the power to decide over life and death in and around conservation areas. This paper integrates Judith Butler’s politics of mourning into necropolitical ecology to interrogate which lives are considered grievable and which ones are not in conservation landscapes. It focuses on two vignettes of violent human-carnivore interactions in Queen Elizabeth National Park, western Uganda: the poisoning of allegedly 11 (but actually three) lions and the killing of a baby girl by a leopard. Both incidents happened in the park’s condoned fishing villages, where historically marginalised Basongora pastoralists have been confined to live since the park’s creation. We examine how the lost lives —of humans and animals— are publicly mourned and which lives are actually considered lost. We show how the politics of mourning in violent human-wildlife encounters goes beyond the (colonial-)state; rather, the unequal distribution of precarity is entrenched by a range of public authorities (e.g., (social) media, (I)NGOs, and politicians). This is, in part, because sovereignty in conservation territories has become transnationalised as post-colonial states allow international NGOs to carve out their own zones of influence. This coloniality of power influences human-carnivore relations and reifies racialised conservation spaces as less-than- human geographies.
2024-01-01T00:00:00Z