Swarm-raiding army ants are extremely polyphagous nomadic predators inhabiting tropical forests. They are considered keystone species because their raids can regulate the population dynamics of their prey and because a plethora of both invertebrate and vertebrate species are obligatorily or facultatively associated with them. Field observations and mathematical modelling suggest that deforestat...

Low-density residential development (i.e., exurban development) is often embedded within a matrix of protected areas and natural amenities, raising concern about its ecological consequences. Forest-dependent species are particularly susceptible to human settlement even at low housing densities typical of exurban areas. However, few studies have examined the response of forest birds to this incr...

Forest fragmentation may alter host–parasite interactions in ways that contribute to host population declines. We tested this prediction by examining parasite infections and the abundance of infective helminths in 20 forest fragments and in unfragmented forest in Kibale National Park, Uganda. Over 4 years, the endangered red colobus (Procolobus rufomitratus) declined by 20% in fragments, wherea...

Disjunctive deductive databases (DDDBs) can capture indeenite information, i.e., imprecise or partial knowledge, of the real world. In this paper we present a method for horizontally fragmenting a DDDB based on the minimal-model forest approach. A minimal-model forest of a DDDB D is a collection of minimal-model trees of D such that each tree represents a set of facts that is disjoint from the ...

We examined demographic responses of California red-backed voles (Clethrionomys californicus) to forest fragmentation in southwestern Oregon at sites where this species has previously shown negative responses to fragmentation. Voles were captured in live traps and released. Voles were rarely caught in clearcuts surrounding 11 forest fragments, but relative vole density did not decrease from the...

Many studies have evaluated the effect of forest fragmentation on dung beetle assemblage structure. However, few have analyzed how forest fragmentation affects the processes carried out by these insects in tropical forests where their food sources consist mainly of dung produced by native herbivore mammals. With the conversion of forests to pastures, cattle dung has become an exotic alternative...

Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation--ubiquitous in modern ecosystems--has strong impacts on gene flow and genetic population structure. Reptiles may be particularly susceptible to the effects of fragmentation because of their extreme sensitivity to environmental conditions and limited dispersal. We investigate fine-scale spatial genetic structure, individual relatedness, and sex-biased dispersa...

Habitat fragmentation is a ubiquitous by-product of human activities that can alter the genetic structure of natural populations, with potentially deleterious effects on population persistence and evolutionary potential. When habitat fragmentation results in the subdivision of a population, random genetic drift then leads to the erosion of genetic diversity from within the resulting subpopulati...

The transnational area of Changbai Mountain (TACM) is crucial to sustainable development in Northeast Asia owing to its abundant forest, which helps in maintaining biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. However, the spatiotemporal patterns of forest in the TACM have been poorly understood across the whole region. The objectives of this study were to quantify the spatiotemporal patterns o...

Insects are highly susceptible to the adverse effects of forest fragmentation. It is now beyond any doubt that fragmentation-induced changes in abundance and species richness occur in many insect groups. However, the study of insects in fragmented forests is still in its infancy and lacks real direction. Simple empirical studies are not answering the questions we most want to answer about fragm...