Deforestation has carved tropical forest landscapes into millions of different-sized patches worldwide. Research has focused on the effect of patch size on biodiversity, while neglecting patch quality effects and leaving geographic and interspecific variance to patch attributes largely unexamined. Here, we assess how patch size and quality affect the encounter rate (ER) and immature-to-female ratio (IFR) of three endangered primates – Mexican mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata mexicana), black howler monkey (Alouatta pigra), and spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) – in three rainforest regions with different forest cover. ER of spider monkeys in the best preserved region (50% forest cover) was positively related to both patch size and quality (i.e., species richness of top food species). ER of mantled howlers in the 17% forest cover region was also positively related to patch size. Yet, both ER and IFR of black howlers in the 50% forest cover region and mantled howlers in the 5% forest cover region were mainly related to patch quality. Our results demonstrate that conservation actions in human-modified landscapes must go beyond considering the effect of patch size, as animal populations can be better predicted by patch quality in some regions.

砍伐森林已将热带森林景观雕刻成全球数百万个不同大小的斑块。研究集中在斑块大小对生物多样性的影响上，而忽略了斑块质量的影响，而地理和种间差异对斑块属性的影响基本上未被检验。在这里，我们评估斑块的大小和质量如何影响三种濒临灭绝的灵长类动物（墨西哥encounter叫的猴（Alouatta palliata mexicana），黑吼猴（Alouatta pigra）和蜘蛛猴（Ateles geoffroyi）–在三个森林覆盖率不同的雨林地区。保存完好的地区（50％的森林覆盖率）的蜘蛛猴的ER与斑块的大小和质量（即顶级食物物种的丰富度）呈正相关。在17％的森林覆盖地区，man叫动物的ER与斑块大小也呈正相关。然而，森林覆盖率为50％的黑色how叫声的ER和IFR和森林覆盖率为5％的黑ler叫声都与斑块质量有关。我们的结果表明，在人类修改的景观中，保护行动必须超越考虑斑块大小的影响，因为通过某些地区的斑块质量可以更好地预测动物种群。