Drivers affecting mammal community structure and functional diversity under varied conservation efforts in a tropical rainforest in Cameroon

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.