Sreekar Rachakonda, Corlett Richard T, Dayananda Salindra, Goodale Uromi Manage, Kilpatrick Adam, Kotagama Sarath W, Koh Lian Pin, Goodale Eben
School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia
Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Yunnan 666303, China.
Biol Lett. 2017 May;13(5). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0186.
Large tracts of tropical rainforests are being converted into intensive agricultural lands. Such anthropogenic disturbances are known to reduce species turnover across horizontal distances. But it is not known if they can also reduce species turnover across vertical distances (elevation), which have steeper climatic differences. We measured turnover in birds across horizontal and vertical sampling transects in three land-use types of Sri Lanka: protected forest, reserve buffer and intensive-agriculture, from 90 to 2100 m a.s.l. Bird turnover rates across horizontal distances were similar across all habitats, and much less than vertical turnover rates. Vertical turnover rates were not similar across habitats. Forest had higher turnover rates than the other two habitats for all bird species. Buffer and intensive-agriculture had similar turnover rates, even though buffer habitats were situated at the forest edge. Therefore, our results demonstrate the crucial importance of conserving primary forest across the full elevational range available.
大片热带雨林正在被转变为集约化农田。已知这种人为干扰会减少水平距离上的物种更替。但尚不清楚它们是否也会减少垂直距离（海拔）上的物种更替，而垂直距离上的气候差异更为显著。我们在斯里兰卡的三种土地利用类型中，测量了海拔90至2100米之间水平和垂直采样样带上鸟类的更替情况，这三种土地利用类型分别是：保护林、保护区缓冲区和集约化农业区。所有栖息地水平距离上的鸟类更替率相似，且远低于垂直更替率。不同栖息地的垂直更替率并不相似。对于所有鸟类物种而言，森林的更替率高于其他两种栖息地。缓冲区和集约化农业区的更替率相似，尽管缓冲区栖息地位于森林边缘。因此，我们的结果表明，在整个可用海拔范围内保护原始森林至关重要。
