What is it about?
Forest fragments in landscapes dominated by agriculture and cities are under a lot of pressure from human activities and harsher climatic conditions. Despite that, the number of siblings of a plant species is the main factor defining the size of its population five years in the future. Contrary to what one would expect, the bigger the population now, the least it will grow (or it will even decrease the most) in five years. Other species population size, proximity to the forest border or quantity of light received have very limite effect on this dynamic.
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Photo by Oskari Manninen on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our study is an important step in understanding how forest regenerate and regrowth in landscapes where forests shares the space with agriculture, cities and other human activities. With this knowledge, we can help plan better restoration and conservation strategies for these forest fragments.
Perspectives
To conserve and restore this amazing forest are huge tasks. Being 'home' of most of the brazilian population, these tasks need to be done distributed on the landscape, in many cases in small fragments. I hope this work serves as a steppingstone to our better understanding of the Atlantic Forest dynamics, and how it creates and maintain its unparallel biodiversity even in these small forest fragments.
Daniel Augusto da Silva
Universidade Regional de Blumenau
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Conspecific density plays a pivotal role in shaping sapling community in highly fragmented subtropical forests, Austral Ecology, October 2022, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/aec.13249.
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