Influence of clay licks on the diversity and structure of an Amazonian forest

The spatial heterogeneity of resource availability is a major driver of biodiversity patterns. Some environmental conditions and resources are characterized by large-scale patterns of variation within the landscape. Clumped local discontinuities or discrete elements also increase spatial heterogeneity, romoting local “biodiversity hot-spots” by modifying habitat characteristics and promoting plant-animal interactions. Clay licks are faunal attractors owing to their role in the nutritional ecology of the user species; nevertheless, the effect of their presence on the surrounding vegetation has been poorly quantified. Here, we use data from 100 x 10 m transects and evaluate the effects of the presence of clay licks on forest diversity and structure at local and landscape scales. In clay lick areas, there was a higher abundance of certain species, which helps to homogenize species composition between localities counteracting the natural distance-decay of compositional similarity between tr...