Affiliations 

  • 1 TEAM Network, Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, Arlington, VA, USA
  • 2 Resources for the Future, 1616 P ST. NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C., 20036, USA
  • 3 Center for Tropical Conservation, Duke University, 3705 Erwin Road #B, Durham, North Carolina, 27705, USA
  • 4 National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), Av. Andre Arauijo 2936, Manaus, Amazonas, 69067, Brazil
  • 5 Wildlife Conservation Society, Congo Program, Brazzaville, B.P. 14537, Republic of Congo
  • 6 Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Jalan Frim, Kepong, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, 52109, Malaysia
  • 7 Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
  • 8 Center for Tropical Forest Science, Tropical Research Institute, Smithsonian 10th and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20560, USA
  • 9 Museu Paraense Emílio-Goeldi, Av. Governador Magalhaes Barata 376 Belém, Pará, 66040, Brasil
  • 10 CIRCLE, Environment Department, University of York, Wentworth Way, North Yorkshire, YO10, UK
  • 11 College of African Wildlife Management, Department of Wildlife Management, P.O. Box 3031, Moshi - Tanzania, Tanzania
  • 12 Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, New York, 10460, USA
  • 13 Centre ValBio Ranomafana, Ranomafana, 312, Madagascar
  • 14 Yachay Tech, Ciudad del Conocimiento Yachay, Urcuquí, 100115, Imbabura, Ecuador
  • 15 Tropical Biodiversity, Museo delle Scienze (MUSE), Corso del Lavoro e della Scienza 3, 38123, Trento, Italy
  • 16 Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management (INA), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Box 5003, 1432 Ås, Norway
  • 17 Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, Avenue 12 de Octubre and Vicente Ramon Roca, Quito, Ecuador
Ecol Appl, 2016 Jun;26(4):1098-1111.
PMID: 28581662 DOI: 10.1890/15-0935

Abstract

The conservation of tropical forest carbon stocks offers the opportunity to curb climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and simultaneously conserve biodiversity. However, there has been considerable debate about the extent to which carbon stock conservation will provide benefits to biodiversity in part because whether forests that contain high carbon density in their aboveground biomass also contain high animal diversity is unknown. Here, we empirically examined medium to large bodied ground-dwelling mammal and bird (hereafter "wildlife") diversity and carbon stock levels within the tropics using camera trap and vegetation data from a pantropical network of sites. Specifically, we tested whether tropical forests that stored more carbon contained higher wildlife species richness, taxonomic diversity, and trait diversity. We found that carbon stocks were not a significant predictor for any of these three measures of diversity, which suggests that benefits for wildlife diversity will not be maximized unless wildlife diversity is explicitly taken into account; prioritizing carbon stocks alone will not necessarily meet biodiversity conservation goals. We recommend conservation planning that considers both objectives because there is the potential for more wildlife diversity and carbon stock conservation to be achieved for the same total budget if both objectives are pursued in tandem rather than independently. Tropical forests with low elevation variability and low tree density supported significantly higher wildlife diversity. These tropical forest characteristics may provide more affordable proxies of wildlife diversity for future multi-objective conservation planning when fine scale data on wildlife are lacking.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.