Community Disassembly in a Fragmented Tropical Landscape Driven by Both Deterministic and Stochastic Processes.

ABSTRACT: Deforestation is a key driver of habitat loss, transforming extensive forested areas into fragmented, isolated patches with reduced biodiversity. While the patterns of species loss from fragmentation are well documented, the underlying processes driving these patterns remain unclear. We sought to identify the community processes driving the disassembly of tropical insectivorous bat communities in response to forest fragmentation in Malaysia. We measured species richness and four functional diversity metrics across assemblages in continuous forests and forest fragments of varying sizes. Eight traits related to prey detection, acquisition, and processing were used to characterize functional diversity based on a global pool of captured species. We found that species-poor assemblages represent

SUBMITTER: Azhar I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12789661 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature