The ecological role of mammal communities in the biogeochemical carbon cycle in a tropical environment

Abstract

Diversity loss can affect the ability of forests to sequester and store carbon from the atmosphere. The capture of atmospheric carbon and its storage in the biomass of organisms and in the ecosystem’s soils are key to mitigating the effects of climate change. Mammals contribute to soil carbon concentration in the northern Amazon, by generating organic remains through trophic interactions with plants and other animals. This thesis investigated whether mammal diversity, interacting with tree diversity and generating such soil organic inputs, affects the content and type of soil organic matter (SOM) and whether these diversity effects on SOM composition differ between mammal and tree communities. The first objective was to test whether both the content and type of SOMaccumulated vary with mammal and tree richness because of possible compositional differences between the organic inputs derived from plants versus animals.