Data from: Inter-annual dynamics and persistence of small mammal communities in a selectively logged tropical forest in Borneo

Understanding temporal change and long-term persistence of species and
communities is vital if we are to accurately assess the relative values of
human-modified habitats for biodiversity. Despite a large literature and
emerging consensus demonstrating a high conservation value of selectively
logged tropical rainforests, few studies have taken a long-term
perspective. We resampled small mammals (≤1kg) in a heavily logged
landscape in Sabah, Borneo between 2011 and 2016 to investigate temporal
patterns of species-level changes in population density. We found that
small mammal population density in heavily logged forest was highly
variable among years, consistent with patterns previously observed in
unlogged forest, and uncovered evidence suggesting that one species is
potentially declining towards local extinction. Across nine species,
population densities varied almost sevenfold during our six-year study
period, highlighting the extremely dynamic nature of small mammal
communities in this ecosystem. Strictly terrestrial murid species tended
to exhibit strong temporal dynamics, whereas semi-arboreal foraging
species such as treeshrews had more stable dynamics. We found no
relationships between population density and fruit/seed mass, and
therefore no evidence that our patterns represent responses to
inter-annual mast fruiting of the dominant canopy dipterocarp trees. This
may be due to the removal of most of the canopy during logging, and hence
the dipterocarp seed resource, although it possibly also reflects
spatiotemporal limitations of our data. Our results underline the
importance of understanding long-term variability in animal communities
before developing conservation and management recommendations for
human-altered ecosystems.