Community structure and diversity of tropical forest mammals: data from a global camera trap network

Terrestrial mammalsare a key component of tropical forestcommunities as indicators of ecosystem healthand providers of important ecosystem services. However, there is little quantitative information about how they change with local, regional and global threats. In this paper, the first standardized pantropicalforest terrestrial mammal community study, we examine several aspects of terrestrial mammalspecies and community diversity (species richness, species diversity, evenness, dominance, functional diversity and community structure) at seven sites around the globe using a single standardized camera trappingmethodology approach. The sites—located in Uganda, Tanzania, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Suriname, Brazil and Costa Rica—are surrounded by different landscape configurations, from continuous forests to highly fragmented forests. We obtained more than 51 000 images and detected 105 species of mammalswith a total sampling effort of 12 687 camera trapdays. We find that mammalcommunities from highly fragmented sites have lower species richness, species diversity, functional diversity and higher dominance when compared with sites in partially fragmented and continuous forest. We emphasize the importance of standardized camera trappingapproaches for obtaining baselines for monitoring forest mammalcommunities so as to adequately understand the effect of global, regional and local threats and appropriately inform conservation actions.