Biology subjects

Hua, F.

Publications and source records attributed to Hua, F..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2021

Trade-driven trapping dampens the biodiversity benefits of forest restoration in Southeast Asia

Tropical forest restoration stands to deliver important conservation gains, particularly in lowland Southeast Asia, which has suffered some of the worlds highest rates of forest loss and degradation. This promise, however, depends on the extent to which biodiversity at forest restoration sites continues to be exposed to threats. A key knowledge gap concerns the extent to which biodiversity recovery in naturally regenerating tropical forests is impacted by trapping for the multi-million-dollar wildlife trade. Here, we use a repeated survey dataset to quantify rates of avian community recovery under forest regeneration, at a flagship restoration site in the lowland rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. We show that over a decade, forest regeneration was associated with significant abundance increases for 43.8% of bird species. However, the apparent negative impacts of trade-driven trapping on avian populations also intensified: the proportion of species that show increased abundance only in very remote forests increased from 5.4% to 16.2%, while the overall accessibility of the forest increased. We found that 14% of species did not recover as fast as predicted based on the observed improvement in forest conditions over the study period. Our results highlight the potential for rapid avifaunal recovery in regenerating tropical forests, but also emphasize the urgency of tackling the serious threat of wildlife trade to Southeast Asias biodiversity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Insights from two decades of the Student Conference on Conservation Science

Conservation science is a crisis-oriented discipline focused on delivering robust answers to reducing human impacts on nature. To explore how the field might have changed during the past two decades, we analyzed 3,245 applications for oral presentations submitted to the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge, UK. SCCS has been running every year since 2000, aims for global representation by providing bursaries to early-career conservationists from lower-income countries, and has never had a thematic focus, beyond conservation in the broadest sense. We found that the majority of submissions to SCCS were based on primary biological data collection from local scale field studies in the tropics, contrary to established literature which highlights gaps in tropical research. Our results showed a small increase over time in submissions framed around how nature benefits people as well as a small increase in submissions integrating social science. Our findings also suggest that students and early-career conservationists could provide pathways to increased availability of data from the tropics and for addressing well-known biases in the published literature towards wealthier countries. We hope this research will motivate efforts to support student projects, ensuring data and results are published and made publicly available.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

The biodiversity benefit of native forest over Grain-for-Green plantations

AimChinas Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) is the largest reforestation program in the world and has been operating since 1999. The GFGP has promoted the establishment of tree plantations over the preservation of diverse native forest. In a previous study (Hua et al. 2016, Nat Comms 7:12717), we showed that native forest supports higher species richnesses of birds and bees than do GFGP plantations. We also showed that mixed-plantation GFGP plantations, which are mostly made up of two to five neighboring monoculture stands of different tree species, planted in checkboard fashion, support a level of bird (but not bee) species richness that is higher than any of the individual GFGP monocultures, although still below that of native forest. To better protect terrestrial biodiversity, which is an important objective of Chinas land-sustainability spending, we recommended that the GFGP should firstly prioritize native forest conservation and regeneration and secondly promote checkerboard planting arrangements over monocultures. Here, we use metabarcoding of arthropod biodiversity to test the generality of these results and policy recommendations.\n\nLocationSichuan, China\n\nMethodsWe used COI-amplicon sequencing ( metabarcoding) of bulk samples of arthropods that were collected with pan traps in native forest, cropland, mixed plantations, and monocultures.\n\nResultsNative forest supports the highest overall levels of arthropod species richness and diversity, followed by cropland and mixed plantations, followed by bamboo monoculture, followed by the other monocultures. Also, the arthropod community in mixed plantations shares more species with native forest than do any of the monocultures. Together, these results show a biodiversity value of mixed plantations for arthropods that is higher than that previously indicated by bees alone.\n\nMain conclusionThese results strengthen our original policy recommendations of (1) promoting the conservation and expansion of native forest and (2) promoting mixed-plantation arrangements. The value of this added metabarcoding-based analysis is that these policy prescriptions are now also based on a dataset that includes over 500 species-resolution taxa, ranging across the Arthropoda.

ecology↗