Tropical forests are increasingly degraded by human pressures, with only 20% of the remaining area considered intact. However, this figure does not include other, more cryptic but pervasive forms of degradation, such as overhunting. In this seminar I will discuss how to quantify the impacts of hunting on mammal and bird populations, and how we can use predictive models and empirical data on abundance declines from local hunting studies to map the spatial patterns of mammal defaunation in the tropics. I will also show how, according to our projections, half of (seemingly) intact tropical forests are partially devoid of large mammals, and how forest coverage alone is not necessarily indicative of ecosystem intactness. Further, I will show how the combination of satellite-based land-cover change maps, habitat suitability models and hunting pressure models can be applied to quantify the individual and combined effects of habitat loss and hunting pressure on mammal communities. I will finish the seminar discussing how the declines in the abundance of frugivorous vertebrates may disrupt key ecological processes such as fruit removal, seed dispersal and predation, and seedling recruitment of animal-dispersed plant species, thus altering the structure and composition of tropical forests and, eventually, their carbon storage

Ponente: Ana Benítez-López, department of Zoology, University of Granada.

Moderador: Joaquín Hortal, Biogeografía y Cambio Global MNCN-CSIC.

Retransmisión: Servicio de Audiovisuales-Mediateca MNCN-CSIC.

Realización y edición: Servicio de Audiovisuales-Mediateca MNCN-CSIC.

C/ José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2
28006 Madrid
Tlno: 91 411 13 28
Fax:  91 564 50 78
http://www.mncn.csic.es