Despite many studies on the impacts of habitat degradation and modification on diversity in tropical forests, the cascading functional consequences of these anthropogenic changes remain poorly understood. Thus, while the majority of research has focused on species as the unit of biodiversity loss, an overlooked component of biodiversity loss is the extinction of ecological interactions. These are important as they often accompany or precede the loss of species, and may have direct effects for ecosystem functionality.

 

We have been building the first interaction networks linking dung beetles and mammals and investigating how these networks change across a land-use gradient from forest to oil palm plantations.  With these networks, we will test fundamental ideas about the consequences of species extinctions for ecological interactions and the cascading effects on ecosystem processes.