Soil fertility and anthropogenic disturbances drive mammal species richness and assemblage composition on tropical fluvial islands

• DOI: 10.1111/aec.13023
• Publication Date: 2021-03-24T06:00:57Z
• Authors: Gilson de Souza F...; Fabricio Beggiato...; Wilson Roberto Sp...; Maíra Benchimol; Katrin Fleischer; Carlos Alberto Qu...; André Luis Sousa ...; Pedro Aurélio Lim...; Adrian Paul Ashto...
• Keywords: Edaphic

Abstract Floodplain areas comprise some 30% of the area in Amazon, but are currently under severe anthropogenic threat. Across Amazon Basin, forest‐dwelling non‐volant mammals play crucial roles maintaining integrity forest functionality, yet have been poorly studied fluvial island forests. Mammal assemblages may be affected by edaphic characteristics that operate indirectly via food nutritional quality, patch attributes, and/or can modulated disturbances. Here, we conducted systematic and quantitative mammal surveys across islands an Amazonian archipelago, to assess influence factors (soil fertility), attributes (island degree isolation) (distance from human settlement logging) on patterns species composition richness. On 28 islands, spoor deployed 49 camera traps (total effort 2940 trap‐days). Subsequently, performed multiple regression analysis investigate environmental predictors richness, while dbRDA (distance‐based redundancy analysis) was used for composition. We found richness positively correlated with soil fertility, combination characteristics, both variables assemblage In particular, smaller were a variety levels fertility disturbances, larger mostly recorded at sites higher low Understanding contribution observed mammalian will help optimise management conservation efforts islands. suggest enforcing hunting logging restrictions within through surveillance activities, especially more fertile