Rainforest Fauna in the Anthropocene: an integrated approach to understanding impacts of climate and land use change (RAINFAUNA)

人类世的雨林动物群：了解气候和土地利用变化影响的综合方法（RAINFAUNA）

• 批准号: NE/X015262/1
• 负责人: Jos Barlow
• 金额: $ 103.72万
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX015262%2F1
• 关键词: Rainforest; Fauna; Anthropocene; integrated; approach

The world's rainforests are incredible reservoirs of biodiversity, holding over 60% of the world's animal species and 67% of all tree species. Conserving this remarkable richness is fundamental for the planet's biological integrity. Yet, it is also under threat from a range of human pressures, such as deforestation, the disturbance of the remaining forests by fires or selective logging, as well as climate change that can exacerbate other threats. These threats are prevalent in the world's largest tropical forests, the Amazon. For example, one third of the Amazon has already been cut down or disturbed by forest fires and selective logging. The climate has also changed markedly in the past 40 years, with some regions facing increased temperatures of 2.5 degrees Celsius and marked reductions in rainfall in the dry season. Give the scale and intensity of these changes, it is imperative that we understand how they are affecting the Amazon's diversity. To date, this has been carried out by using satellites and large-scale plot networks to assess changes in carbon stored by trees or the species composition of the forest. We have much less information on rainforest animals, which are not visible from space or airplanes, and are mobile and hard even for humans to detect on the ground. The absence of large-scale and standardised information on rainforest animals means we do not know how human impacts are affecting them at large scales.Our RAINFAUNA project aims to resolves this knowledge gap by using new technologies and methods to make the first Amazon-wide assessment of the density of populations of birds and invertebrates (insects and arthropods). For birds, we focus on the antbirds, a group of understorey species that are emblematic of rainforest fauna. For invertebrates, we focus on species living in the leaf-litter and topsoil. These two groups provide important information for conservation and ecology. Birds are the best-known faunal group, and estimating their densities will allow us to determine population sizes of species for the first time. Understanding invertebrate activities and diversity provides insights into the important functional roles they carry out in the forests, from decomposition of leaves to the mixing of the topsoil. We will use the forest microclimate to understand animal responses to climate change and forest disturbance. The temperature and humidity of the understorey and leaf litter are key to understanding tropical forest fauna, as they describe the conditions experienced by species. We will use sampling to explore this link between microclimate and fauna, using automated recording units to assess tropical fauna at 180 sites. We will also develop our microclimate model so it can map forest temperature and humidity across the basin. This will allow us to understand how the density of birds and activities of insect changes over space. Crucially, we can also explore how microclimate - and therefore the fauna - will change in the future under different scenarios of climate change and forest disturbance.

世界上的热带雨林是令人难以置信的生物多样性宝库，拥有世界上60%以上的动物物种和67%的树木物种。保护这一非凡的丰富性对地球的生物完整性至关重要。然而，它也受到一系列人类压力的威胁，例如森林砍伐、火灾或选择性砍伐对剩余森林的干扰，以及可能加剧其他威胁的气候变化。这些威胁在世界上最大的热带森林——亚马逊雨林中十分普遍。例如，三分之一的亚马逊雨林已经被森林大火和选择性采伐所砍伐或扰乱。在过去40年里，气候也发生了显著变化，一些地区的气温上升了2.5摄氏度，旱季降雨量明显减少。考虑到这些变化的规模和强度，我们必须了解它们是如何影响亚马逊的多样性的。迄今为止，这项工作是通过使用卫星和大规模样地网络来评估树木或森林物种组成所储存的碳的变化。我们对雨林动物的了解要少得多，它们从太空或飞机上都看不见，而且它们是移动的，甚至人类在地面上也很难发现。缺乏关于雨林动物的大规模和标准化的信息意味着我们不知道人类的影响是如何大规模地影响它们的。我们的RAINFAUNA项目旨在通过使用新技术和新方法解决这一知识鸿沟，对亚马逊地区的鸟类和无脊椎动物（昆虫和节肢动物）种群密度进行首次评估。对于鸟类，我们关注的是蚁鸟，这是一组具有雨林动物群象征意义的下层物种。对于无脊椎动物，我们关注的是生活在落叶层和表土中的物种。这两个类群为保护和生态学提供了重要信息。鸟类是最著名的动物群，估计它们的密度将使我们第一次确定物种的种群规模。了解无脊椎动物的活动和多样性，可以让我们深入了解它们在森林中发挥的重要功能作用，从树叶的分解到表土的混合。我们将利用森林小气候来了解动物对气候变化和森林干扰的反应。下层植被和凋落叶的温度和湿度是了解热带森林动物的关键，因为它们描述了物种所经历的条件。我们将使用采样来探索小气候和动物之间的联系，使用自动记录装置来评估180个地点的热带动物。我们还将开发我们的小气候模型，这样它就可以绘制整个盆地的森林温度和湿度。这将使我们了解鸟类的密度和昆虫的活动如何随空间变化。至关重要的是，我们还可以探索在不同的气候变化和森林干扰情景下，小气候——以及动物——将如何在未来发生变化。

项目成果

Listening to tropical forest soils

• DOI: 10.1101/2023.05.19.541323
• 发表时间: 2023-05
• 期刊: bioRxiv
• 作者: Oliver C. Metcalf;F. Baccaro;J. Barlow;E. Berenguer;Tom Bradfer‐Lawrence;L. Rossi;Érica Marinho do Vale;Alexander C Lees