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

世界上的热带雨林是生物多样性令人难以置信的水库，拥有世界上60%以上的动物物种和67%的树木物种。保护这一非凡的财富是地球生物完整性的基础。然而，它也受到一系列人类压力的威胁，如砍伐森林、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。这些威胁普遍存在于世界上最大的热带森林--亚马逊。例如，亚马逊河的三分之一已经被森林火灾和有选择的伐木所砍伐或扰乱。过去40年来，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，旱季的降雨量明显减少。考虑到这些变化的规模和强度，我们必须了解它们如何影响亚马逊的多样性。到目前为止，这项工作是通过使用卫星和大规模地块网络来评估树木储存的碳或森林物种组成的变化。我们对雨林动物的了解要少得多，它们在太空或飞机上都看不到，而且它们是移动的，甚至人类在地面上也很难发现。由于缺乏有关雨林动物的大规模和标准化信息，我们不知道人类的影响是如何在大规模上影响它们的。我们的RAINFAUNA项目旨在通过使用新技术和方法对鸟类和无脊椎动物（昆虫和节肢动物）的种群密度进行首次亚马逊范围的评估，从而解决这一知识缺口。对于鸟类，我们关注的是蚁鸟，一组下层物种，是雨林动物群的象征。对于无脊椎动物，我们重点关注生活在落叶层和表土中的物种。这两个群体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能够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，可以深入了解它们在森林中发挥的重要功能作用，从分解树叶到混合表土。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。林下植物和落叶层的温度和湿度是了解热带森林动物群的关键，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微气候和动物群之间的这种联系，使用自动记录装置来评估180个地点的热带动物群。我们还将开发我们的小气候模型，以便它可以绘制整个流域的森林温度和湿度。这将使我们能够了解鸟类的密度和昆虫的活动在太空中的变化。至关重要的是，我们还可以探索未来在气候变化和森林干扰的不同情景下，小气候--以及动物群--将如何变化。

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.