Well Isn't This Ironic?

I found an interesting article about a study (also contains link to original research article) conducted on habitat fragmentation and selective logging and their effects on ecosystem functioning. (In case you are not familiar with the term, habitat fragmentation is when natural or man-made barriers form within a habitat. A typical example would be a road). These human disturbances are associated with loss of biodiversity (genetic transfers are impeded by barriers) and loss of habitat (especially detrimental for species that may prefer certain sizes or species of trees).  Loss of biodiversity and habitat are then usually associated with negative impacts on ecosystem functioning.  So I was especially surprised to see a study that reported no effects and even increases in ecosystem functioning.

Some of the findings:

• human disturbance hardly affected the number of species
• community composition of some groups of species was affected by fragment size
• selective logging did not affect number of species or community composition but increased some ecosystem processes

Wait, what?

So what's going on here? A few things need to be considered:

• The study only looked at one forest, in Kenya
• Once a certain number of species were included in the study.
• The fragments of the forest were still rather large.
• The ecosystem functions measured were animal-mediated (pollination, seed dispersal, seed predation, decomposition, army-ant raiding and antbird predation) which logical would increase with the extra movement of species caused by logging activity.

There are sometimes some silver linings to environmental changes, but you have to remember to look at the big picture- is the fragmentation and selective logging really benefiting the ecosystem? Probably not.

I would be interested to see further studies done in other areas to compare, and other studies done to look at other aspects of this ecosystem in Kenya.