A multi-taxa assessment of nestedness patterns across a multiple-use Amazonian forest landscape

Understanding how biodiversity is partitioned among alternative land-uses is an important first step for developing effective conservation plans in multiple-use landscapes. Here, we analysed nestedness patterns of species composition for nine different taxonomic groups [dung beetles, fruit-feeding butterflies, orchid bees, scavenger flies, leaf-litter amphibians, lizards, bats, birds and woody plants (trees and lianas)] in a multiple-use forestry landscape in the Brazilian Amazon containing primary, secondary and Eucalyptus plantation forests. A formal nestedness analysis was performed to investigate whether species-poor land-uses were comprised of a subset of species from more diverse forests, and the extent to which this pattern varied among taxa. At the landscape-scale the species-by-sites matrices were significantly nested for all nine taxonomic groups when both sites and species were sorted to maximally pack the species/occurrence matrix and, except for orchid bees when sorted by land-use intensity (primary forest to Eucalyptus plantation). Different patterns emerged when we conducted pairwise analyses of nestedness between the three forest types: (a) most of the taxonomic groups were nested in accordance with increased land-use intensity; (b) neither orchid bees nor leaf-litter amphibians from secondary forest made up a significant nested subset of primary forest species, although species found in Eucalyptus plantation sites were nested within secondary forest communities; and (c) lizards from Eucalyptus plantations were not a nested subset of either primary or secondary forest. Our findings emphasize the complex nature of patterns of species occupancy in tropical multiple-use forestry landscapes, and illustrate that there may be no easy solutions to questions regarding the conservation value of secondary and exotic plantation forests. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.