ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020
Below the canopy: global trends in forest vertebrate populations and their drivers.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Potential of Agricultural Plantations and Orchards to Support Understory Forest Bird Diversity in Southeast Asia.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Effectiveness of protected areas in the Caucasus Mountains in preventing rangeland degradation.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- The utility of the Living Planet Index as a policy tool and for measuring nature recovery.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Past, present, and future of the Living Planet Index.npj biodiversity · 2023Review
- Wildlife in climate refugia: Mammalian diversity, occupancy, and tiger distribution in the Western Himalayas, Nepal.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- An Outcome-Oriented, Social-Ecological Framework for Assessing Protected Area Effectiveness.Bioscience · 2022Article
- Scaling the extinction vortex: Body size as a predictor of population dynamics close to extinction events.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Ethical Considerations for Wildlife Reintroductions and Rewilding.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Global forest assessments use forest area as an indicator of biodiversity status, which may mask below-canopy pressures driving forest biodiversity loss and 'empty forest' syndrome. The status of forest biodiversity is important not only for species conservation but also because species loss can have consequences for forest health and carbon storage. We aimed to develop a global indicator of forest specialist vertebrate populations to improve assessments of forest biodiversity status. Using the Living Planet Index methodology, we developed a weighted composite Forest Specialist Index for the period 1970-2014. We then investigated potential correlates of forest vertebrate population change. We analysed the relationship between the average rate of change of forest vertebrate populations and satellite-derived tree cover trends, as well as other pressures. On average, forest vertebrate populations declined by 53% between 1970 and 2014. We found little evidence of a consistent global effect of tree cover change on forest vertebrate populations, but a significant negative effect of exploitation threat on forest specialists. In conclusion, we found that the forest area is a poor indicator of forest biodiversity status. For forest biodiversity to recover, conservation management needs to be informed by monitoring all threats to vertebrates, including those below the canopy.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.