Estación Biológica Quebrada Blanco: un sitio poco conocido para investigación en biodiversidad y ecología en la Amazonía peruana

La Estación Biológica Quebrada Blanco (EBQB), en el nororiente de la Amazonía peruana, es un lugar donde se ha venido realizando investigación científica desde 1984. En sus inicios la investigación se enfocaba en la ecología y el comportamiento de primates; sin embargo, también se suman trabajos sobre inventarios de algunos grupos de árboles (>10 cm DAP), helechos y aves. El área de la EBQB es muy poco perturbada y está ubicada en una zona de alta biodiversidad. En este trabajo resumimos su historia, la información sobre biodiversidad de que se dispone y mostramos a la EBQB como un lugar con alto potencial para futuros estudios en biodiversidad y ecología en un amplio espectro de organismos.

The Estación Biológica Quebrada Blanco (EBQB) in north-eastern Peruvian Amazonia is a place where research has been conducted since 1984; mainly, on the ecology and behavior of primates, but, later inventories were realized for trees (>10 cm dbh), ferns and birds. The EBQB area is very little disturbed and located in a region of high biodiversity. Here we describe the history of EBQB, summarize the available information on its biodiversity and point out the potential of EBQB for future studies on the biodiversity and ecology of a broad spectrum of organisms.

Author Correction: Small Neotropical primates promote the natural regeneration of anthropogenically disturbed areas.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Small Neotropical primates promote the natural regeneration of anthropogenically disturbed areas.

Increasingly large proportions of tropical forests are anthropogenically disturbed. Where natural regeneration is possible at all, it requires the input of plant seeds through seed dispersal from the forest matrix. Zoochorous seed dispersal - the major seed dispersal mode for woody plants in tropical forests - is particularly important for natural regeneration. In this study, covering a period of more than 20 years, we show that small New World primates, the tamarins Saguinus mystax and Leontocebus nigrifrons, increase their use of an anthropogenically disturbed area over time and disperse seeds from primary forest tree species into this area. Through monitoring the fate of seeds and through parentage analyses of seedlings of the legume Parkia panurensis from the disturbed area and candidate parents from the primary forest matrix, we show that tamarin seed dispersal is effective and contributes to the natural regeneration of the disturbed area.

Seasonal variation and an "outbreak" of frog predation by tamarins.

We report temporal variation and an "outbreak" of frog predation by moustached tamarins, Saguinus mystax, in north-eastern Peruvian Amazonia. Frog predation rates were generally very low, but strongly increased in October 2015. Other high rates, identified by outlier analyses, were also observed in September-November of other years. Over all study years, predation rates in this 3-month period were significantly higher than those in the remainder of the year, suggesting a seasonal pattern of frog predation by tamarins. Reduced fruit availability or increased frog abundance or a combination of both may be responsible for both the seasonal pattern and the specific "outbreak" of frog predation.

Long-term consistency in spatial patterns of primate seed dispersal.

Seed dispersal is a key ecological process in tropical forests, with effects on various levels ranging from plant reproductive success to the carbon storage potential of tropical rainforests. On a local and landscape scale, spatial patterns of seed dispersal create the template for the recruitment process and thus influence the population dynamics of plant species. The strength of this influence will depend on the long-term consistency of spatial patterns of seed dispersal. We examined the long-term consistency of spatial patterns of seed dispersal with spatially explicit data on seed dispersal by two neotropical primate species, Leontocebus nigrifrons and Saguinus mystax (Callitrichidae), collected during four independent studies between 1994 and 2013. Using distributions of dispersal probability over distances independent of plant species, cumulative dispersal distances, and kernel density estimates, we show that spatial patterns of seed dispersal are highly consistent over time. For a specific plant species, the legume Parkia panurensis, the convergence of cumulative distributions at a distance of 300 m, and the high probability of dispersal within 100 m from source trees coincide with the dimension of the spatial-genetic structure on the embryo/juvenile (300 m) and adult stage (100 m), respectively, of this plant species. Our results are the first demonstration of long-term consistency of spatial patterns of seed dispersal created by tropical frugivores. Such consistency may translate into idiosyncratic patterns of regeneration.