Seeing the wood despite the trees: exploring the impact of human disturbance on plant diversity, community structure, and standing biomass in fragmented high Andean forests

High Andean forests harbor a remarkably high biodiversity and play a key role in providing vital ecosystem services for neighboring cities and settlements. However, they are among the most fragmented and threatened ecosystems in the neotropics. To preserve their unique biodiversity, a deeper understanding of the effects of anthropogenic perturbations on them is urgently needed. Here, we characterized the plant communities of high Andean forest remnants in the hinterland of Bogotá in 32 0.04 ha plots. We assessed the woody vegetation, and the understory and epiphytic cover were sampled. We gathered data on compositional and structural parameters and compiled a broad array of variables related to anthropogenic disturbance, ranging from local to landscape-wide metrics. We also assessed phylogenetic diversity and functional diversity. We employed non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) to select meaningful variables in a first step of the analysis. Then we performed partial redundancy an...安第斯高山森林（High Andean Forests）拥有极高的生物多样性，可为周边城市与定居点提供至关重要的生态系统服务，发挥核心作用。然而，它们是新热带界中破碎化程度最高且受威胁最严重的生态系统之一。为保护其独特的生物多样性，亟需深入解析人为扰动对其产生的影响。本研究于波哥大腹地的32块0.04公顷样地中，对安第斯高山森林残余斑块的植物群落开展特征描述：我们调查了木本植被，同时对林下植被与附生植物覆盖度进行采样；收集了群落组成与结构参数相关数据，并整理了一系列涵盖局地至景观尺度的人为干扰相关变量；此外还评估了系统发育多样性与功能多样性。分析的第一阶段，我们采用非度量多维标度（non-metric multidimensional scaling, NMDS）筛选出具有生物学意义的变量，随后我们开展了偏冗余分析……