As well as leading to a loss of biodiversity (i.e. species richness and abundance), human activities also affect ecosystem functioning. Documenting how the suite of ecological roles changes following disturbance provides a complementary source of information for conservation management. To this end, we measured mammal diversity in terms of community structure (i.e. abundance, composition and species richness) and functional diversity in three sites differing in conservation effort in a tropical rainforest in Cameroon. Results show that sites without primary or secondary conservation efforts had lower mammal abundances and an altered mammal composition but similar species richness compared to better-protected areas. In terms of functional diversity, we found more variation of traits (i.e. FDis) in the site with primary conservation and higher abundances of functionally unique species (i.e. FOri) in sites with either primary or secondary conservation efforts. We found no overall difference in the abundance of specialist and generalist species between sites (i.e. FSpe). We identified several drivers affecting abundance, species richness and functional diversity of mammal communities, although there did not appear to be a common driver affecting all mammal diversity measures in a similar way. Our results suggest that, in addition to preserving mammal abundance and community composition, conservation efforts (both primary and secondary) are able to contribute to maintaining higher levels of functional diversity compared to areas devoid of conservation. We demonstrate that functional diversity metrics can provide valuable additional information about the status of mammal communities that can be used to better inform conservation management.

中文翻译：

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在喀麦隆热带雨林的各种保护工作中影响哺乳动物群落结构和功能多样性的驱动因素

除了导致生物多样性丧失（即物种丰富度和丰度），人类活动也会影响生态系统功能。记录扰动后生态作用如何变化为保护管理提供了补充信息来源。为此，我们测量了喀麦隆热带雨林保护工作不同的三个地点的群落结构（即丰度、组成和物种丰富度）和功能多样性方面的哺乳动物多样性。结果表明，与保护区较好的地区相比，没有进行一级或二级保护工作的地点的哺乳动物丰度较低，哺乳动物组成发生改变，但物种丰富度相似。在功能多样性方面，我们发现了更多的性状变异（即 FDis) 在具有初级保护和更高丰度的功能独特的物种 (即 FOri) 的地点中进行初级或二级保护工作。我们发现站点（即 FSpe）之间的专家和通才物种的丰度没有总体差异。我们确定了几个影响哺乳动物群落丰度、物种丰富度和功能多样性的驱动因素，尽管似乎没有一个共同的驱动因素以类似的方式影响所有哺乳动物的多样性措施。我们的结果表明，除了保护哺乳动物的丰度和群落组成外，与缺乏保护的地区相比，保护工作（主要和次要）能够有助于维持更高水平的功能多样性。