Abstract
Unlike many other tropical regions where large-scale habitat loss and habitat fragmentation is a recent phenomenon, deforestation on the island of Java, Indonesia, dates back to the first millennium AD. Today forest remains as numerous isolated patches, covering less than 10 % of the island. This makes it an excellent area to study the effect of forest fragmentation in long-lived animals, such as primates. I surveyed 31 forest fragments, ranging from 1 to 1,300 km2, to assess the primate community composition. Fragments held between one and five species. Excluding the dry easternmost part of the island, there was a significant relationship between species number and fragments size, with a z-value (slope) of 0.20. A nestedness analysis showed the composition of the different fragments to be highly ordered, with smaller fragments comprising subsets of larger ones. True rainforest species, such as the Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch), are the first species to disappear after isolation. Based on these analyses the minimum fragment size for an area to harbour the entire Javan primate community is between 50 and 400 km2. The close relationship between fragment size, primate number, and rainforest dependence may explain the historic extinction of species, such as the siamang Symphalangus syndactylus and the orang-utan Pongo spp., from Java. With forest disappearing rapidly throughout Southeast Asia the patterns observed on Java allow us one potential view into the future for other regions if forest loss and fragmentation continue along their current trajectory.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank KAI Nekaris for encouragement, LK Marsh for organising the ‘Primates in Fragments Symposium’ at the International Primatological Society Conference in Kyoto, and S van Balen for introducing me to the nestedness programme. My work in Indonesia was made possible due to the collaboration with the Indonesian Institute for Sciences and the Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation. Surveys throughout Indonesia were aided by grants from the Netherlands Foundation for International Nature Protection (Van Tienhoven Stichting), Society for the Advancement of Research in the Tropics (Treub Maatschappij), Ape TAG Conservation Initiative, and the University of Amsterdam.
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Nijman, V. (2013). One Hundred Years of Solitude: Effects of Long-Term Forest Fragmentation on the Primate Community of Java, Indonesia. In: Marsh, L., Chapman, C. (eds) Primates in Fragments. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8839-2_3
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