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Figure S3. Bootstrapped estimates of the proportion of taxa with invariant response patterns with respect to (A) year of survey, (B) El Niño events and (C) logging events. Thick line represents the median, boxes the 1 st and 3 rd quantiles, and whiskers the range. In panels (B) and (C), data were categorised into pairwise comparisons of taxon responses to forest degradation in which both surveys were conducted in years during which the event occurred (within), when one survey occurred during an event and the other occurred outside of the event (straddling), and when both surveys occurred outside of the event (outside).
Source publication
The functional stability of ecosystems depends greatly on interspecific differences in responses to environmental perturbation. However, responses to perturbation are not necessarily invariant among populations of the same species, so intraspecific variation in responses might also contribute. Such inter-population response diversity has recently b...
Citations
... We summarized taxon responses from 8,130 combinations of surveys and taxa. We compiled biodiversity data from 55 published data sources (Supplementary Table 1), from which we extracted presence-absence data following the methods of ref. 123. Previous analyses of multi-taxa biodiversity data have demonstrated that comparisons of presence-absence data among taxa are more robust than analyses of abundance data 23,124 . ...
... Moreover, abundance data were not available for all taxa, meaning that presence-absence data are the highest-level data that allowed us to use exactly the same analysis method for all taxa. Data sources that sampled multiple years were split into separate, annual surveys, allowing us to more accurately align biodiversity observations with forest degradation measurements taken at different time points, and to account for year-to-year variation in taxon-specific responses to the same ecological gradient 123 . Data sources that included multiple sampling methods were also split into separate, method-specific surveys 123 . ...
... Data sources that sampled multiple years were split into separate, annual surveys, allowing us to more accurately align biodiversity observations with forest degradation measurements taken at different time points, and to account for year-to-year variation in taxon-specific responses to the same ecological gradient 123 . Data sources that included multiple sampling methods were also split into separate, method-specific surveys 123 . This process resulted in a total of 127 surveys being used for analysis. ...
Logged and disturbed forests are often viewed as degraded and depauperate environments compared with primary forest. However, they are dynamic ecosystems¹ that provide refugia for large amounts of biodiversity2,3, so we cannot afford to underestimate their conservation value⁴. Here we present empirically defined thresholds for categorizing the conservation value of logged forests, using one of the most comprehensive assessments of taxon responses to habitat degradation in any tropical forest environment. We analysed the impact of logging intensity on the individual occurrence patterns of 1,681 taxa belonging to 86 taxonomic orders and 126 functional groups in Sabah, Malaysia. Our results demonstrate the existence of two conservation-relevant thresholds. First, lightly logged forests (<29% biomass removal) retain high conservation value and a largely intact functional composition, and are therefore likely to recover their pre-logging values if allowed to undergo natural regeneration. Second, the most extreme impacts occur in heavily degraded forests with more than two-thirds (>68%) of their biomass removed, and these are likely to require more expensive measures to recover their biodiversity value. Overall, our data confirm that primary forests are irreplaceable⁵, but they also reinforce the message that logged forests retain considerable conservation value that should not be overlooked.
