Human land-use changes are particularly extensive in tropical regions, representing one of the greatest threats to terrestrial biodiversity and a key research topic in conservation. However, studies considering the effects of different types of anthropogenic disturbance on the functional dimension of biodiversity in human-modified landscapes are rare. Here, we obtained data through an extensive review of peer-reviewed articles and compared 30 Neotropical bat assemblages in well-preserved primary forest and four different human-disturbed habitats in terms...

Aim: Locally abundant species are usually widespread, and such pattern has been related to properties of the niches and traits of species. However, such explanations fail to account for the potential of traits to determine species niches, and often overlook statistical artifacts. Here we examine how trait distinctiveness determines species abilities to exploit either common habitats (niche position) or a range of habitats (niche breadth), and how niche position and breadth in turn affect abundance...

Aim: Understanding the complex interaction and relative contributions of factors involved in species and trait diversification is crucial to gain insights into the evolution of Neotropical biodiversity. Here, we investigated the drivers of morphological variation in bromeliads along a latitudinal gradient in a biodiversity hotspot. Location: Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Taxon: A species complex in the genus Vriesea (Bromeliaceae). Methods: We measured shape and size variation for 208 floral bracts and 176 leaves in individuals from...

Despite the widespread use of Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) for predicting the responses of species to climate change, these models do not explicitly incorporate any population-level mechanism. On the other hand, mechanistic models adding population processes (e.g., biotic interactions, dispersal and adaptive potential to abiotic constraints) are much more complex and difficult to parameterize, especially if the goal is to predict range shifts for many species simultaneously. In particular, the adaptive potential (based on genetic...

1.Traditionally, trait‐based studies have explored single‐trait‐fitness relationships. However, this approximation in the study of fitness components is often too simplistic, given that fitness is determined by the interplay of multiple traits, which could even lead to multiple functional strategies with comparable fitness (i.e. alternative designs). 2.Here we suggest that an analytical framework using boosted regression trees (BRT) can prove more informative to test hypotheses on trait combinations compared to standard linear models. We use two...

A high level of variation of biodiversity recovery within a landscape during forest restoration presents obstacles to ensure large‐scale, cost‐effective and long‐lasting ecological restoration. There is an urgent need to predict landscape variation in forest restoration success at a global scale. We conducted a meta‐analysis comprising 135 study landscapes to predict and map landscape variation in forest restoration success in tropical and temperate forest biomes. Our analysis was based on the amount of forest cover...